


The Dreaming Tree

by SlippinMickeys



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Case File, F/M, MSR, RST, UST, season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:00:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 29,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27651707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlippinMickeys/pseuds/SlippinMickeys
Summary: A mystical force in a small northern town is affecting the dreams of its residents -- and it’s turning deadly. Mulder and Scully must get to the bottom of the mystery and put a stop to it before they lose not just themselves, but each other.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 112
Kudos: 137
Collections: X-Files Case File Fanfic Exchange (2020)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [isadub](https://archiveofourown.org/users/isadub/gifts).



_After all jacks are in their boxes_

_And the clowns have all gone to bed_

_You can hear happiness staggering on down the street_

_Footprints dressed in red_

_And the wind whispers Mary..._

**_PROLOGUE_ **

_Harbor Springs, Michigan_

_May 6, 1915_

_6:50pm_

She was sitting on the edge of the school’s property because that was the only place she could see the lake. She wasn’t really supposed to be out there -- curfew was in ten minutes, and the nuns didn’t like it when students came back in right at 7:00, but the nuns didn’t like her anyway, so she did not give it another thought. 

The lake centered her; made her feel right in the chest and between the eyes, and feeling right wasn’t something that happened to Eleanor Blackbird very often.

Of course, her name wasn’t really Eleanor. 

With a pang, she thought of her family. Her aunts. Of the birch bark and porcupine quill boxes her grandmother made, so beautiful and rich with color and meaning. She missed running her fingers along the tops, the bumps of the quills so smooth and straight. Sometimes her grandmother sold them to visiting white tourists, but the most beautiful ones she kept for herself, for Eleanor. 

She missed her family desperately. She was beginning to forget them. She was beginning to forget herself. 

The snap of a twig off to her right caught her attention, and she turned to see two local girls step off the path and up to the edge of the property. They were her age, she thought, wearing fine white dresses with lace trim. Their knee socks looked almost new, like they’d never been darned, and the blonde girl had a pretty pink bow in her hair. 

“Hello,” said the one with darker hair. 

Eleanor nodded, but didn’t say anything back. The girls who lived in town could be mean, and she had enough experience with them to be wary. 

When Eleanor didn’t respond, the girls traded a look and took a step closer to her. 

“What’s your name?” said the blonde girl kindly, “I’m Gladys Murphy. This is Marjorie Holland.”

“I’m Eleanor,” she said cautiously. “Eleanor Blackbird.”

The blonde girl squinted at her. 

“What’s your _real_ name?” she asked. Her voice was amiable, but she said it like she was owed an answer. The locals knew the Indian kids were often renamed when they arrived at the school.

“Dakaasin,” Eleanor said, putting her shoulders back straight. She was proud of her name, and two little white girls wouldn’t take that away from her. 

“What does it mean?” asked Gladys. 

“A cool wind,” Eleanor replied, rising to her feet. Fists at her side, she was ready to fight. But the girls didn’t react to her. They merely looked. 

Eleanor studied them curiously. “What are you doing here?” 

Gladys looked to Marjorie. 

“We’re going to the Dreaming Tree,” Marjorie told her, “we have to walk past your school to get there.”

The Dreaming Tree. It sounded like something her ancestors might talk about. Definitely something the nuns would beat a student for simply mentioning.

Eleanor stole a look back at the school. It stood a silent sentry on the bluff over the town. There were no nuns about that she could see, no one with a pocket watch and a bell, a willow switch tucked into the folds of their habit. 

“What’s the Dreaming Tree?” Eleanor asked, turning back to the two girls. 

“It’s the place where wishes come true,” said Marjorie simply. “Come along, Gladys.”

The girls took several steps toward the edge of the ridge and Eleanor held out a hand. “Wait!” she said. 

Marjorie and Gladys turned back to her expectantly. 

“Can I come with you?” Eleanor asked. If there was a chance this Dreaming Tree was real, she needed to see it. 

Gladys shrugged. “You won’t get in trouble?” she said. 

Eleanor shot one more look at the school. “No.” 

“Come along then,” said Gladys. 

All three girls were silent as they trudged along the top of the bluff away from the school. The ground underfoot was mealy with sand and leaf detritus, pine needles and scrub. A cool breeze buffeted off the lake and Eleanor thought _that’s me_. 

Was there really a tree that made wishes come true? Eleanor thought of quill boxes and maple syrup, her aunts chanting words she couldn’t remember. She thought of her jingle dress, packed away in a cedar trunk. It would no longer fit her. 

In the distance behind them, Eleanor heard the sharp peal of the curfew bell. Distracted, she stumbled over a tree root. She caught herself before falling completely and wiped her hands on her dress. She would be whipped anyway at this point; what was a little dirt on the unadorned grey frock?

“Is it far?” she asked the two girls, who were walking ahead of her, the skirts on their dresses swishing like the white froth of waves on the big lake. 

Marjorie looked over her shoulder at Eleanor. “Not too far,” she said, exchanging another look with Gladys. 

“It can’t be too close to town, can it?” Gladys said, and they swung off the trail and into the woods. 

This part of the forest hadn’t yet been logged so there was very little undergrowth, just a carpet of leaves and the occasional windthrow. Stately beech trees and maple, chestnuts and hemlock rose out of the ground and reached toward the heavens where the nuns said Jesus sat on his throne. 

Their shoes crunched through the duff, up and over a rise, and then the girls stopped. 

“There it is,” Marjorie said, pointing to a mammoth white pine that grew out of the top of a slope. 

“That’s the Dreaming Tree?” Eleanor said skeptically. It looked like any other pine in the forest, unremarkable and common. “How does it work?”

“You have to climb it,” Gladys explained.

“As high as you can,” added Marjorie. 

“Then you cross your fingers, lean your head on the trunk and make your wish,” Gladys finished. 

“And you have to stay in the tree for ten minutes after or your wish won’t come true,” Marjorie said quickly, “that’s part of it.” 

Eleanor was beginning to regret asking to join them. She didn’t ever remember her grandmother telling her of a Dreaming Tree, and she was sure her grandmother would have known about them. 

“Do you want to go first?” Marjorie asked her. 

Eleanor shook her head and then felt a cold tingling beginning at the base of her spine. _Oh no_ , she thought, _not now._ She needed to see the lake, she needed to center herself. 

Gladys shrugged. “I’ll go first.”

She and Marjorie approached the tree, Eleanor standing dumbly where she was, watching the girls with curiosity and distrust. 

The tree, being a white pine, was great for climbing -- it had lots of straight sturdy branches, but they didn’t start close to the ground. There were a couple of broken off branches about six feet up, just little spikes jutting out from the tree, but they would work well enough as foot and handholds to get to the first big branch. However, you’d need a step up to reach them. 

Gladys turned to Eleanor expectantly. “I need a boost,” she said. 

Eleanor moved over silently, and she and Marjorie laced their hands together, brown and white. Gladys stepped up onto them and they lifted her up, their little bodies heaving her until she grabbed onto a conveniently placed broken stump and found her footing on another. After that, she climbed up with relative ease, only slipping once, which elicited a shriek from Marjorie. After she reached the first big branch, she made it look easy. She climbed and climbed and climbed, and Eleanor felt butterflies in her stomach the higher Gladys got, the cold tingling in her spine spreading slowly up and down her back. Eleanor shifted on her feet, trying to control it. 

Finally, almost as high as she could go, Gladys gingerly lowered herself until she was sitting on a branch, made a show of crossing her fingers to the two girls below her and leaned her forehead against the trunk of the tree. After a moment she leaned back and called down “I’ve done it! I’ve made my wish!”

Marjorie nodded at her solemnly. 

“Are you sure I must stay up here ten minutes, Marjorie?” she called down. 

Marjorie looked at Eleanor and then put her hands on her waist, and called back up, “Yes! You must!”

Gladys seemed to roll her eyes, but settled into the tree, waiting. 

After a few minutes, her skin prickling, Eleanor decided to speak. 

“What do you see up there?” she called out. 

“Oh, you can see the whole town!” Gladys shouted down, “And Lake Michigan beyond it! There’s a steamer heading out of the bay!”

The lake. She could see the lake. 

“I’ll go next,” Eleanor said to Marjorie, who smiled at her, cat-like.

Marjorie picked up a stick and started poking the tree with an air of boredom. Eleanor looked to the west -- the sun was glowing orange and getting close to setting. She needed to get back to the school. 

“All right, Gladys!” Marjorie called, startling Eleanor. “You can come down now!”

Gladys descended without issue, swinging down onto the lowest big branch until she caught her shoe on one of the broken stumps, which cracked under her weight. She paused for a moment, her face going pale, but it seemed to hold her, so she continued her ginger descent, and then hopped down, landing hard. She grunted, but stood, brushing leaves from her white skirts. 

“How will you know when your wish comes true?” Eleanor asked. 

“Why, it already has,” Gladys said brightly, smiling at Eleanor for the first time. “I wished to make a new friend, and here you are.”

Eleanor gave her a small smile back and Marjorie laced her hands together, looking to Gladys. 

“Eleanor would like to go next,” she said. 

Gladys moved with Marjorie, and they hoisted Eleanor as high as they could. Eleanor was able to wedge her foot onto the small bit of broken branch and worked her way up slowly, the tingle in her back growing stronger. _Up, up, she needed to get up_ . _She needed to see the lake_. Just as she grabbed onto the first large branch, the stump her foot was resting on gave a mighty crack and fell away from the tree, leaving Eleanor swinging from her handhold. She was able to pull herself up enough to swing her leg over the branch, heaving her body onto it, fright thrumming through her, breathing hard. 

“My dear, are you all right?” Gladys asked, though she didn’t sound as concerned as Eleanor felt.

“Yes, I-” Eleanor started, then looked down to where she would need to descend -- the broken branch had fallen away, leaving her nothing to hold onto. Still cleaving to the tree, she felt tears start to form in her eyes, the cold tingling beginning to spread to the backs of her legs. “How will I get down?” she cried. 

“Why, we’ll catch you of course,” Marjorie said, taking a step closer to the tree. “Go on up and make your wish, Eleanor, the sun is setting!”

Thinking of the lake, Eleanor propped herself up on shaky limbs and began the slow work of climbing up the tree. Gladys had made it look easy. It was not. Every time she looked down her heart leapt into her throat and the cool tingling would spread further. _The lake, she needed to see the lake_.

Finally, when she was more or less as high as Gladys had been, she stopped, hugging the trunk of the tree, breathing hard. The tingle was spreading to her arms as well, leaving little pinpricks of feeling along her skin. She turned her head trying to see the lake but felt vertigo set in when she did, and so she pressed her face into the tree. 

“Make your wish, Eleanor!” Marjorie called from below, “We will need to get home soon!”

Swallowing past the lump in her throat, Eleanor crossed her fingers where they hugged the tree close and moved to press her forehead to the trunk. _My family. I wish to see my family. I wish to go home_ she thought, as loudly in her mind as she could. 

She heard a giggle from below and cracked an eye to look at Gladys and Marjorie far beneath her. They were laughing and backing away from the tree. 

“Majorie?” she called down, “Gladys?”

The giggles turned into peals of vicious laughter, and the girls continued to back away from the tree, pointing and laughing at Eleanor. Eleanor didn’t want to believe this was happening. 

“Is this really a Dreaming Tree?” Eleanor whimpered into the trunk.

Marjorie heard her. 

“No,” she called up coldly. “There is no such thing. It is only a pine. And an ugly one at that.” With that, they turned and began walking away. 

The cold tingling had reached Eleanor’s fingers and toes. She could feel a volt of energy begin to surge through her, running fissures through her bones. 

“Wait!” she called out desperately, “How will I get down?!”

Marjorie turned back toward the tree, her face canted up to look at Eleanor, all humor gone from it. 

“Fly down,” Majorie shouted viciously, “you’re a blackbird, aren’t you?”

Gladys laughed. “Perhaps a cool wind will carry you!” she said and she and Marjorie both turned and ran back toward the bluff, their laughter carrying through the air as they disappeared over the rise. 

Eleanor cleaved to the tree as the cold power within her turned hot. Colubrine and powerful, it coiled around her heart. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

_Cross Village, Michigan_

_June 29th, 1999_

_10:48pm_

Their headlights caught the spicate backside of a porcupine, rambling off the shoulder and into the tall grasses on the side of the road. Out here you had to be mindful of raccoons and opossum, squirrels doubling back directly under your tire tread. The glowing eyes of deer called forth a tap of the brakes, and skunks were to be avoided at any cost. 

The night was a time of migration, even just to the other side of the highway, and as the pavement cooled it also echoed with the skitter and clop of musky transients, wandering into the safety of a world where the humans were largely abed. 

“It’s just up here, to the left,” Scully said from the passenger seat, pulling double duty as both navigator and ungulate watchman. The dull glow from the dashboard clock made her hair look almost purple. Mulder had to remind himself to keep his eyes on the road.

There was barely a break in the trees, a two-track at best, but he obediently turned, the sedan bumping and rocking over roots and ruts, dust reflecting the red of the taillights, giving the back of the car an eerie glow. 

The man they had talked to had said to come as soon as they got into town, no matter the hour, and it was nearly 11:00 p.m.

They finally rumbled to a stop in a small clearing, the house tucked back amongst a collection of towering maples, surrounded by overgrown hydrangeas that were not yet flowering. There was a truck parked at an angle along a small patch of grass and an old RV on blocks off past a graying brush pile. 

They tipped out of the car to the sound of a barking dog: a black hound chained to a tree just off the porch, bathed in the glow of a floodlight. It hurled itself at Mulder and Scully as they approached, testing the limits of the chain and the tree, kicking out clumps of dirt when it jumped. Its bark was hoarse, like it spent its days baying at quarries that never came.

A screen door swung open above them, clacking into the vinyl siding of the house. A man emerged into the fluorescent spotlight of the outdoor floods, his face half in shadow. 

“You the FBI agents?” he asked, as they ascended the soft wooden steps up to the house. 

Mulder reached into his pocket and pulled out his badge as he stepped onto the landing. 

“Mulder,” he said, then nodded his head at his partner, “Scully.”

The man barely glanced at it. “Come on in,” he said and disappeared into the murk through the doorway. The hydraulic mechanism on the door swung it into Mulder’s shoulder as he trailed Scully inside. 

The room they entered was foyer, living room and dining room combined, with a small utilitarian kitchen behind it, separated from the rest of the space by a builder’s grade countertop peninsula. The fluorescent overhead lights were on in the kitchen, as was a small lamp that glowed yellow in the corner nearest the front door. There was a long, low couch with a matching overstuffed chair next to it, and a leather La-Z-Boy; the seat worn low by thousands of hours of sloth and hefty ass.

Mulder didn’t notice the woman sitting in the chair until his eyes gave the room a second pass. 

The man appeared at his shoulder then, hand outstretched.

“Thanks for seeing us so late, Mr. Poquette,” Mulder said, though it had been Poquette who’d asked them to come at whatever hour.

“Mr. Poquette’s my father,” he said, and gave Mulder a firm handshake, “please, call me Hank.” Hank nodded to the woman in the chair. “My love, Moira.” 

Mulder noted the introduction and skipped his eyes briefly to Scully, who looked back with a small smile, backlit by a lamp that turned her hair into a muzzy halo.

Hank Poquette was a short man with three-day-old beard stubble, an ectomorph with wide hazel eyes. He had dark, bronzed skin and the saggy-ish thin wrinkles of someone who spent his time working out of doors. 

Mulder peered at Moira Poquette with interest. He would admit to himself that she did indeed have the vacant, haunted look of a recent abductee. Her eyes were staring, wide, with large bags beneath them, and she was chewing on her fingernails with singular intensity. 

Scully approached her and sat down gingerly on the couch nearest Moira’s chair. 

“Moira?” she said gently, addressing her as she would a small child, “I’m Agent Scully.” Mrs. Poquette swung her eyes to Scully as if noticing her for the first time. “Can we ask you some questions?” Scully asked softly. 

Moira nodded slowly, and Mulder looked to Hank, who gave him a gruff resigned smile and lowered himself into one of the chairs at the dining room table, his unwavering gaze focused on Moira. 

“Your husband tells us that you believe you’re an abductee?” Scully said. 

Moira seemed to come to herself before she answered. 

“I guess that’s as good an explanation as any,” she said. 

Hank jumped in. 

“I’m the one who thinks she was abducted,” he said, somewhat sheepishly. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“Why don’t you tell us what happened Mrs. Poquette,” Mulder said, leaning forward in encouragement. 

“I still don’t rightly know,” Moira said, looking at her husband who looked back with the expression of a lovesick pup.

“You got the video I sent you, Agent Mulder?” Hank queried. Mulder nodded. “If you can explain it to me, I’m all ears.”

It was the video that had brought them up there. It had arrived only a day ago via a MUFON contact, and the footage had been verified by Chuck Burks as untampered with. The focus was hazy, and when Mulder initially showed it to Scully, she’d commented wryly: “If this is what I think it is, I’m transferring back to Quantico immediately." After a few seconds, however, the image sharpened to reveal the sleeping forms of Hank and Moira Poquette. At the forty five minute mark -- almost exactly -- Moira Poquette disappeared from her side of the bed. She didn’t get out, she didn’t wander off. She was quite literally there one second and gone the next, the blankets that covered her settling down onto the mattress below, reminding Mulder of Yoda’s death bed scene _Return of the Jedi_.

Her husband had claimed “abduction” and Mulder had gotten himself and Scully on the next flight out -- which turned out to be the following evening, with a connection through Detroit to a tiny two-gate airport in Pellston, Michigan. They were five hours north of Detroit by car and at least sixty minutes away from anything that Scully considered to be civilization, like a Starbucks or Ann Taylor.

“What happened to you, Moira?” Mulder asked warmly. 

“I --” she began, “I don’t know. I was laying in bed one minute, and the next I was… somewhere else. I had no control over my own body. I could think, but I couldn’t move. It felt like I was a puppet in someone’s show.”

Mulder could see his reflection in the dime-store artwork above Moira’s head.

“Has this happened to you before?” Scully asked. 

“Yes,” Moira replied, her eyes downcast. 

“After the third time, I set up that camera,” Hank said. “Three nights out of the last seven.”

“Only at night?” Mulder asked, and Moira nodded blankly.

“What about you, Mr. Poquette?” Scully said, “When did you notice Moira missing?”

“I didn’t,” Hank said simply. “She was there when I woke up. Every time.”

“Then how did you know to set up the camera?”

“Our son,” said Hank, “has a summer job that keeps him out late. We ask him to let us know when he gets home.”

“I don’t sleep well until he’s home,” said Moira shyly.

“Moira wasn’t in bed one of the nights when he got home and he saw her disappear before his own eyes the second time. Scared him pretty bad.”

“Did he notice floating lights, noises, a strange mist, anything to that effect?” Mulder asked. 

Hank shook his head. 

“Can we talk to him?” Scully asked. 

“He’s staying at my mom’s,” Moira said. She still hadn’t looked either Mulder nor Scully in the eye. 

“Mrs. Poquette, can you describe where you’re taken?” Mulder asked. 

“She doesn’t like to talk about it,” Hank said, and Scully looked pointedly between husband and wife and then stood. 

“Mr. Poquette, can you show me to the room where this took place? I’d like to get a better idea of the setting,” she said. Mulder shot her a silent look of thanks while Hank stood and led Scully down the short hallway. If the wife wouldn’t discuss something with the husband, it was likely she wouldn’t be totally forthcoming with them while he was in the room. 

When they were gone, Mulder crouched in front of the older woman and asked, “Moira, where do you go?”

“It’s different every time,” she said softly. 

“How so?”

“The first time,” she answered, rubbing the cuticles on her right hand with her thumb over and over, “it was to our hunting camp up in the Upper Peninsula. The second one was just our living room. But it wasn’t the hunting camp. And it wasn’t our living room. Not really. It was those places, but poor imitations of them. Like a… like a half-dressed theater set.”

Mulder had been waiting to hear details about an alien craft or an examination room; he had never come across a case where an experiencer was taken to a partially done-up copy of a place from their own life. 

“You mentioned that you felt like a puppet in someone’s show, can you elaborate on that?” he asked. 

Abductees often reported a shift into an altered state of consciousness -- something British abduction researchers have called “the Oz Factor,” where external sounds cease to have any significance to the experiencer and fall out of perception, and they report feeling introspective and calm. 

“Just that,” Moira said. “I’m in my head but not in control of my body. I’ll walk over and pick up an object without my brain telling my body to do it. I’m just a passenger in my body, and someone else is the pilot.”

None of this sounded like a typical alien abduction. Mulder wasn’t sure _what_ it sounded like. The mental Rolodex in his brain was fanning through card after card and coming up empty.

“Do they do experiments on you?” Mulder asked as gently as he could. 

“What?” she said, finally looking him in the eye. “No. Sometimes I just stand or sit there, but most of the time… most of the time we’re being chased.”

“Chased?” Mulder asked, confused, “by what?”

“I never know,” Moira said. 

Mulder sat back on his heels. He could hear Scully and Hank murmuring to each other in the bedroom. 

“You mentioned ‘we,’” he finally said. “You said ‘most of the time we’re being chased,’ who’s ‘we,’ Moira? Who’s there with you?”

Moira took a shaky breath and then said “Hank. Hank is always there.”

Mulder thought back to the tape of the Poquette’s in their bedroom. How Moira disappeared and Hank had remained in the bed.

“Last night,” Moira went on, “it happened again. We were being chased up and down two sets of stairs connected by a hallway at the top and a hallway at the bottom. Nowhere to go but down and then up.”

Mulder heard a sound from the corridor and turned. Hank was standing there, his eyes wide, his hand slapped against the wall as if to hold himself up. Scully was standing behind him looking concerned. 

“ _What_?” Hank said, his face ashen. “Moira, what?”

Moira gulped audibly and looked to Mulder. 

Hank stumbled through the room and fell to the floor at Moira’s feet, next to Mulder. 

“Those stairs… That was my dream. Moira, you’re going… into my dreams?”

XxXxXxXxXxX

_Petoskey, Michigan_

_June 30, 1999_

_11:39am_

Lake Michigan was grey and roiling, the waves with their foaming whitecaps thundering into boulders there to prop up the shore. They passed by stately Victorian manses erected a stone’s throw from the water onto the grounds of a Methodist chautauqua. The owners were on the porch, sipping lemonade and nodding to fellow sophisticates summering from downstate. Mulder saw the plaques on the houses as they passed: _1889, 1878, 1874_. He thought of his mother in Quonochontaug, her patrician lips dipping into a rocks glass of gin. 

A herring gull wheeled overhead, dropping the carapace of a half-eaten crawfish. Another gull swooped by, trying and failing to catch it. It bounced off the second gull’s beak and cartwheeled slowly to the earth, landing in the grass as lightly as the husk of a sunflower seed. 

It was odd to see water going on and on into the limitless horizon and know they were in the middle of the country. He and Scully were each from a different coast, and this frothing inland sea somewhere in the middle felt more like a theory, like a place on a map. 

They were making their way back to the Poquette house after snagging several hours of daytime sleep at a motel in the bigger town just to the south. They had stayed at the house with the couple until almost dawn, through an uneventful -- and sleepless -- night. 

“Mulder, I don’t think I need to tell you that it’s not possible for one person to physically enter the dreams of another. A dream is a state of consciousness, it’s not… it’s not a realm you can step into.”

“And yet here we are,” Mulder said, drumming his thumbs lightly on the steering wheel. 

He chanced a look at her profile, which seemed more sharply cut than the average human’s. Scully had the silhouette of a goddess or fae, her beauty carved from the mould of a Titanide. Even so, she looked fatigued. Her face had a pinched, drawn quality to it -- one he instantly recognized as her tired look. If she was this weary at the beginning of a case, he worried what she might be like at the end. 

They passed through the Chautauqua and emerged into suburban sprawl, the small highway lined by fast food joints, an autobody shop, a probably not-great Mexican restaurant. He pulled into the drive-thru of a McDonald’s and ordered two black coffees. 

Twenty minutes later found them bouncing down the long driveway of the Poquette’s property, the dregs of their coffees sloshing wildly up the sides of the cups. 

Moira met them at the door with a drained smile, wringing her hands around a dishtowel. She looked less shaky than she’d been the night before, though with her hair pulled back into a ponytail she looked ten years younger. 

“How are you, Moira?” Scully asked her gently. 

“Good,” the woman said, hugging herself, “nothing has happened since you left.”

“Where’s Hank?” Mulder asked.

“He had to work,” Moira responded. “And Agent Mulder, he called about a half hour ago. He said you need to meet him out there right away.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

_L’Arbre Croche Commons Construction Site_

_Harbor Springs, Michigan_

_12:20pm_

There was a line of pickup trucks parked haphazardly along the side of the road by the entrance to the construction site where Hank was working -- the site was outside the town of Harbor Springs, tucked away in the woods near a bluff that overlooked the lake, the fresh Michigan air marred by a hint of diesel. There was a large wooden sign near a chewed up dirt track leading into the forest that proclaimed “ _Future Site of L’Arbre Croche Commons -- Shops, Art, Fine Dining!_ ”. An artist’s sketch depicted happy consumers walking along a sidewalk in front of a beautiful brick building, smiling and holding shopping bags. 

Of the trucks parked along the embankment, only one was occupied. Two men were sitting on the tailgate of an F-150, dressed in dirty Carharts and tee shirts, hard hats tucked into armpits. Hank, who’d been leaning on the fender of the truck, and who was wearing a bright orange safety vest, shoved off and walked toward Mulder and Scully as they got out of their rented sedan and approached the group.

“Agents,” Hank said, nodding. He looked keyed up, almost vibrating with a restless energy. “I’m not the only one,” he said, looking at the two men sitting on the back of the truck.

“Only one what?” Scully said, confused. 

“Dreamer,” said Hank. 

Scully swung her eyes to get a better look. 

Mulder stepped forward, his face intense. She recognized the look — she could see his pulse beating under his jawline, dark with whatever-o’clock shadow. 

“Tell me,” he said. 

“So I was walking to the site from my truck this morning, and I heard them talking,” Hank said. 

The older of the two men jumped down from the tailgate and extended a hand to Mulder. “Hoffman Olsen,” he said as Mulder shook it. “This is my son H2,” he added, nodding at the younger man. 

“H2O?” Mulder said, clearly delighted.

H2 shrugged.

“You heard them talking about what, Hank?” Scully asked, wanting to get down to brass tacks. 

“Their dreams,” said Hank simply. 

Both agents looked expectantly at Hoffman, who rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.

“It happened two nights ago,” the man said and stole a glance at his son. “Had a dream my boy and I was playing in the World Series. When we woke up the next morning, he said he’d had the same dream.”

Scully looked to H2 who gave her a tentative smile. 

“I didn’t think it was that weird at first,” said H2, “we’d been watching the Tigers game before bed.”

“When did it get weird?” Mulder asked. 

Hoffman answered. “Well, when we started talking about it, we got kind of freaked out. We didn’t both just dream about baseball, we dreamed the _exact same thing about baseball._ ”

“Which was?” asked Mulder. 

“You know,” Hoffman gave a small smile “bottom of the ninth, I was pitching, my son was batting. Two down, bases loaded, tie game.”

Mulder gave a low whistle. 

“And that’s how you remember it, too?” Scully asked H2, who nodded. 

“So,” Mulder said, “did you win?”

“Nah,” said Hoffman, “but H2 did.”

“Let me guess, grand slam over the left field fence?”

H2 shook his head. “I wish,” the young man said. 

Hoffman cut in and let out a small laugh. “I beaned him with a pitch and he got to take first.”

“A win is a win,” shrugged Mulder. 

“Yeah, but that’s when it got _really_ bonkers, Agent,” said Hoffman, who turned to his son. “Show them.”

H2 jumped off the back of the truck and hitched up his shirt. On his left side, where the ribs started to curve into his back, was a large black and blue welt. 

Both agents took a step toward the kid for a closer look. When Scully leaned in, she could see -- in the area where the black of the bruise was starting to turn yellow -- small lines from the laces of a baseball. 

XxXxXxXxXxX 

He hadn’t been sure they were even dealing with an X-File until the moment he saw the bruise on the kid’s back. 

Scully gently palpated the area with permission from H2 and then leaned back, her gaze intense. Scully was a kestrel; the smallest bird of prey, Mulder thought. She saw everything, and the talons came out when they needed to.

“And this wasn’t here when you went to bed the night before?” she asked. 

“No, ma’am. I haven’t played baseball since high school.”

“He was good,” Hoffman said proudly. 

“What about a workplace injury? A construction accident?”

“Nuh-uh.” 

“You’re sure?”

Hoffman snorted. “He’da spent half a day filling out incident reports if he had been. And, we’re on the same crew; he didn’t get hurt here. Anyway, that bruise is from the baseball, lady, you can see the lace marks!”

Hoffman was getting worked up, so Mulder changed tack. 

“Hank, you said you overheard them talking about this?”

Hank nodded. “This morning,” he said, “they were talking to Lindsey.”

“Lindsey?” Mulder asked. 

“Lindsey Conrad,” Hoffman clarified. “Runs a catering truck that comes by the site around lunchtime a couple days a week. She swung by this morning with coffee and donuts, breakfast burritos, that kind of thing. All the crews know her. She was here last week. Even sat down and ate lunch with us.” He looked to Hank, “You remember, Hank, you were there.”

Hank nodded. 

“Anyway, we were talking with Lindsey about our baseball dream when Hank came over.”

Mulder looked to Hank who was bouncing on the balls of his feet. 

“I asked if either of them disappeared from their beds,” Hank said, and Hoffman and H2 both shook their heads. 

“Least, not that we know of,” from Hoffman. 

“Thing is,” Hank said, “when I asked them, Lindsey turned white as a sheet. Closed up her truck and tore ass out of here with about ten guys still waiting in line.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

_Petoskey, Michigan_

_2:03pm_

Lindsey Conrad ran her catering business out of a small kitchen in the back of an historic building in downtown Petoskey. Her food truck was parked at the end of a nearby parking lot behind a sign marked “Reserved.”

Mulder knocked on the metal door, which had a sign with her business name and phone number on it. There was a faded post-it stuck at eye-level and covered with yellowing packing tape that said: “knock for deliveries!” 

Lindsey answered the door after a longer than average pause, wiping her hands on a dishtowel, her face wearing an expression of expectant surprise. She was young, probably mid-twenties, wearing a plain white tee shirt, jeans, an apron, and had blonde hair tucked up into a bandana. 

“Sorry, I was just pulling something out of the oven,” she said, a little out of breath. “Can I help you? I thought maybe you were a delivery.”

Mulder and Scully both pulled out their badges at the same time. 

“My goodness,” said Lindsey. 

“Can we come in? It shouldn’t take long,” Scully said, giving the woman a clipped smile. 

“Of course,” Lindsey said, stepping back, “though I’m afraid there isn’t really anywhere to sit. This is a commercial kitchen. I only really serve out of my truck.”

Mulder shuffled in behind Scully; the air thick with the sharp smell of yeast. The temperature in the room was high, which wasn’t a surprise given the equipment packed cheek by jowl in the small space -- an industrial-sized oven, a six-burner commercial stovetop, and a proofing oven. There were also several very shiny, box-shaped appliances that were likely refrigerators and freezers, each of which had a movie poster taped to the front -- _Top Gun_ and _Cocktail_ (the lips on Tom Cruise on both appeared to be wearing several different shades of lipstick). The metal countertop was stacked with oversized rimmed cooking sheets and a commercial mixer churning a large dented bowl with gusto. 

“One sec,” Lindsey said, walking over to it, flicking a switch and pitching the space into a loud silence. 

“You like Tom Cruise?” Mulder asked. Lindsey blushed, then shrugged. “Looks like you keep pretty busy,” he continued. 

“Summers are pretty nuts. Helps me stay in the black for the slow months, though.”

“You’ve been catering long?” 

“Long enough,” she answered. 

“Is that your truck out there in the parking lot?” Scully piped in. 

Lindsey nodded. “I’ve got my permit and all if you need to see it,” she said, looking a bit worried. 

“We’re not here about your truck,” Scully said, holding up a calming hand, “and you’re not in any trouble.” She looked to Mulder, who took over the conversation. 

“Miss Conrad, we’re here investigating a strange phenomenon that’s been happening to several people in the area, and we believe you may know something of it.” He could feel a trickle of sweat slide between his shoulder blades.

“Oh?” she asked, and Mulder could almost hear her gulp. 

“Were you working at the L'Arbre Croche Commons construction site this morning?” he asked. 

Lindsey paled and reached back to the metal countertop behind her, as if for support and gave a weak nod.

“A couple of the workers there said you left rather abruptly?” 

She leaned back fully against the countertop, sagging into it. 

“I did.”

“Can you tell us why?” Mulder asked. 

Lindsey sighed and rubbed her eyes, smearing a dusting of flour across her forehead. 

“I usually go to construction sites around lunch breaks. A lot of guys bring their lunches, but if they see a truck with a hot meal, they’ll stop and get something anyway. This morning I was up pretty early and had some inventory I needed to use, so I made a few pots of coffee and some hot donuts and drove up there -- those guys would do just about anything for a breakfast burrito. So, I got to talking to Hoff about his weekend and he told me the strangest thing had happened to him and his son. And I laughed at it at first -- I mean, it was ridiculous and kind of funny. But then one guy overheard and came over and said the same thing was happening to him and his wife and then asked Hoff if they ever disappeared out of their beds, and I just --” 

At that, she looked between Mulder and Scully with almost desperation. 

“What happened, Miss Conrad?” Scully asked. 

“Last week,” she began, “in the middle of the night, my husband woke me up in a panic. He works nights sometimes and had just gotten home. He always pops his head in our son’s room to check on him when he gets home -- he’s a total softie -- anyway, he got home, checked, and our toddler wasn’t in his bed. When he came to the bedroom and found me alone, he panicked. Woke me up saying the baby was gone, the baby was gone, and my God, I leapt up so fast I think my head almost hit the ceiling.” The woman drew her hand to her chest and went on. “But then before we could even leave our bedroom, we heard our son crying -- ran to his bedroom and there he was in his little bed, crying his poor head off. Jason -- that’s my husband - swore when he checked the baby wasn’t in there. But he was back and other than being real upset, he seemed totally fine. Clung to me the rest of the night, though. And he’s been sleeping with us in our bed ever since.”

Mulder nodded at her, indicating he was with her so far. 

“So anyway, night before last, Jason was home and all three of us went to bed pretty early. At midnight, my son woke us up screaming ‘Daddy gone! Daddy gone!’ We couldn’t get much from him, but he was inconsolable for another thirty minutes after that. He just kept saying that Daddy wasn’t in the bed. When that surveyor asked Hoff if any of his loved ones had been disappearing from their beds, I thought about that night my son was gone and then what he said about my husband, and I -- I’m scared.” 

“That must have been very distressing,” Scully said sympathetically. “But what exactly are you scared _of_?” Scully asked.

“When I heard about Hoffman’s dream… when I saw the bruise on H2’s back. I’m the kind of person who remembers my dreams, Agent Scully,” she said cryptically. She swiped at her eyes again and took a deep breath through her nose. “There’s a reason I was up early enough to make a breakfast call,” her eyes were full of tears, “I’m afraid to go to sleep.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

_L’Arbre Croche Commons Construction Site_

_Harbor Springs, Michigan_

_4:25pm_

They were back at the construction site, which had been secured for the day: bulldozers and tree-felling equipment at rest and out of place in the peace of the woods. Hank had waited there for them, dark lines under his eyes. Scully looked away when he glanced in her direction. 

Mulder stepped over tree strata and scree, his long legs making it look easy. Pulled at by the burrs of raspberry vines, Scully felt like she was being sucked into the O horizon, the forest’s blanket of trillium leaves threatening to swallow her whole. 

They had talked in the car, deciding the only link they could currently draw between the Dreamers, as Hank called them, was the construction site itself. Mulder, having the look of a dog with a bone, had asked Hank to take them to the area where the Dreamers had shared a meal the week before. 

Hank slowed as he approached the chain track of a yellow bulldozer.

“We ate lunch together just the one day,” he said, nodding toward a pine tree, “sat right there.”

The tree stood sentinel, towering over the rest of the canopy as if it were the alpha of the pack, its compatriots long ago cowed to submission. It was craggy and knobbed, its bark run deep with fissures, sap oozing out as slowly as regret. 

Scully peered up at the branches, their great arms reaching out as if in supplication.

“Right here?” Mulder asked, moving in front of it.

Hank nodded. 

“I only remember because one of the guys from the tree service said the smell of pine reminded him of his grandmother and everybody gave him shit for it.”

Mulder walked around the base of the tree, around the perimeter of the area, his gaze intent. Catching Scully’s attention, he pointed up at just above eye level, where she saw what had drawn his eye: two sets of initials inside of a very weathered carved heart. 

“Did you all order from Lindsey Conrad’s food truck that day?” he asked, turning back to Hank.

“I brought my own lunch,” Hank said, “one of the tree service guys did too, I think. The food truck lady said she’d only joined us because she was having such a slow day. Wanted to get off her feet for a while before she headed home.”

“Did you share anything? Pass around a thermos or all eat cookies someone brought from home, or…” Scully asked.

Hank gave her a blank look. 

“I’m trying to determine a causation,” she said. “If some kind of dissociative drug was accidentally ingested, it could have caused some kind of shared hallucination, or-“ 

Scully stopped talking on a look from Mulder. 

“Well what are you thinking, Mulder?” she asked testily. 

“I’m not sure what to think,” he replied. “In the field of psychology, there are thousands of documented cases of shared dreams -- be it those of people in close relationships and many cases involving twins, but… This is something different.”

Hank Poquette shifted on his feet and Mulder continued looking around at the construction equipment. 

“How well do you know the workers you sat with that day?” he asked.

“It’s a small town,” Hank shrugged, “but it’s not like we were friends. I’ve worked with them before, but I wouldn’t say that I know any of them particularly well. I’m just a surveyor. I’m usually gone by the time the construction crews move in.”

“What made this job different?” Mulder asked. 

“The size of the development,” Hank said, puffing out his lips. “They keep adding on to the scope of work.”

“Big one?” Scully asked. 

“Biggest since Bay Harbor,” Hank said, nodding toward the bluff and across the bay to a huge development on the south end of the neighboring town. Scully could only just make it out, miles across the water.

“What else is around here?” Mulder asked.

“Nothing much,” Hank replied, “the developers have been salivating over this land for years. The second the church put it up for sale there was a big bidding war.”

“The Church owned this land?” Scully asked, mildly curious. “Which church?”

“Catholic,” Hank told her simply.

Scully took a moment to digest this fact. 

“Is it unusual for the church to own land this far out of town?” Mulder asked. 

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Hank said, “but the school was out here, so…”

“The school?” Mulder asked.

Hank didn’t say anything, just gestured for them to follow him and turned on his heel, walking past some of the bigger pieces of equipment. He turned onto a newly hewn dirt road that was laced with lumps of dried dirt spit out by the treads of enormous truck tires. Scully wished she’d worn more sensible shoes and caught an apologetic look from Mulder, who was navigating his way next to her without the burden of three inch heels. 

Over a rise, down a gentle slope, the road opened up onto a long overgrown green that ran along the length of the bluff. Perched atop it was a building with a large brick edifice, evidently built when beauty was valued above efficiency, bordered by a chain link construction fence. The building’s windows were black and mostly boarded up. The building itself looked like a dark, hollow version of the one from the “ _Future Site_!” sign by the road. 

“The old Indian school that the church ran,” Hank said, hooking his thumb toward the building. “Was the only thing out here. They’re turning it into the community hub. Supposed to have restaurants, shops, that kind of thing. The residences will be over there,” he pointed back to the woods from where they’d come. 

Mulder stood back and looked at it. 

“Indian school?” he said, looking at Hank. 

“You supposed to say ‘Native’ now? I dunno,” Hank said sheepishly, misinterpreting Mulder’s question. “Been here as long as I can remember.”

"An Indian _boarding_ school?" Scully clarified. 

"Yeah," Hank said. 

"What are those?" Mulder asked. 

"Just what they sound like," Scully said, "boarding school for Native kids."

"We used to call it 'White School,'" Hank said. Mulder gave him an inquisitive look, at which Hank shrugged. "They had to learn to be white," he went on. 

"They forcibly assimilated Native American children into Euro-American culture. English-only, no native dress or customs allowed," Scully explained, "Admission was mandatory until the seventies."

"The _nineteen_ seventies?" Mulder asked, aghast. 

Scully nodded.

"The _late_ nineteen seventies," she said. Mulder made a face that summed up exactly how Scully felt.

She squinted at the cornerstone, which sat above a tarp that was covered in masonry equipment: buckets crusted with dried concrete. It read _1889_. 

“You said this was run by the church?” Mulder asked. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

_The Flying Dutchmen Restaurant_

_Harbor Springs, Michigan_

_6:12pm_

“I can’t make heads or tails of this, Mulder,” Scully said, sighing into her salad. It was mostly iceberg lettuce and had little flavor. They’d stopped at the first place they could find, though her appetite always suffered when she was tired. They’d both opted for coffee rather than water or a soft drink. She set her fork down. 

Mulder was leaning back against the diner’s chair having finished a cheeseburger, his tie in the pocket of his jacket and his shirtsleeves rolled up. Scully realized she’d been staring at his forearms for longer than was probably discreet. Lately something had awakened in her that led to spending more than the average amount of time giving her partner appreciative glances. His lips in particular generally pushed her over the edge, and they were currently pursed and three and a half feet away from her. 

“You told me when we came here you thought it was a pretty cut and dried abduction case,” she went on. 

“At the time I thought it was,” he said, tilting his head to the side and giving her an appraising look with his bryophyte eyes. 

“So what do you think it is, now? Do you really believe these people are physically sucking their loved ones into their dreams?”

“I believe something is at work here,” he said cagily. 

“Aliens?” 

He kept his eyes on her and ran his hand down his throat, the rasping sound of his stubble turning her thoughts salacious.

“Probably not aliens,” he finally said. 

She reached across and snagged one of the potato chips left on his plate. It was a little soggy with pickle juice but it was still the best thing she’d tasted all day. 

“Okay, I’ll bite,” she said, taking one more chip and snapping it with her front teeth. “What do you think it is?” He’d been playful lately, and she’d been enjoying it.

“Some kind of phenomenon,” he rumbled. 

“Doing what?”

He smiled at her. “You said it yourself.”

“So you really believe these so-called Dreamers are pulling other people out of thin air and into their dreams?”

He shrugged at her, the small smile still at his lips. She sighed, and thought of the welt on H2 Hoffman’s back. Something was definitely happening here, and people were getting hurt. She sobered, tired of the game. 

“Well, whatever it is, we need to figure out how to put a stop to it,” she said.

“I agree.”

“So this phenomenon,” she went on, “what’s its modus? Man made or naturally occurring? Is it transmitted? Is it contagious?”

Mulder appeared to sober as well. 

“I can’t say. I wish I had a theory.”

“What _can_ you say?” 

“The only thing connecting all these people is that worksite.”

“The one thing we agree on,” she concurred and took a sip of coffee. Their waitress came by and offered a warm up which they both refused. “So what do you think our next step should be? I want to take a closer look at the flora at the site, see if there’s maybe some kind of poisonous plant or -- ” 

“Giant fungus?” Mulder finished for her.

“God forbid,” she grinned. She’d had to throw out the clothes she’d been wearing to the Brown Mountain case; had had yellow-tinged nightmares for weeks. 

“I want to look into the school,” Mulder suggested, surprising her.

“The school?” she said. “Mulder, that school hasn’t been in operation for a decade.”

He shrugged a shoulder and she felt herself relent. After this long she’d learned not to fight too many of his hunches; they paid off far more often than they didn’t. He rose suddenly and pulled his phone out of his coat. 

“I’m going to start calling local dioceses and see what information is out there,” he told her.

“And I’ll see if I can find a local naturalist.”

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

_...A broom is drearily sweeping _

_ Up the broken pieces of yesterday's life _

_ Somewhere a queen is weeping _

_ Somewhere a king has no wife _

_ And the wind, it cries Mary... _

  
  
  


_ Harbor Springs, Michigan _

_ July 1, 1999 _

_ 9:02am _

A local DNR conservation officer had agreed to meet her at the site first thing the next morning, but had not yet arrived when Scully parked the rental sedan under the  _ Coming Soon!  _ development sign. She had dropped off Mulder at the local library before pulling out a pair of hiking boots from the backseat and swapping them out with her heels. Thus outfitted, she had driven north.

Despite dressing more sensibly for her venture, she still stepped carefully over the rutted, muddy two track that led into the woods, the pungent smell of humus a welcome assault on her nose. She decided to look around on her own, heading for the area where the various Dreamers had lunched the week prior. 

The sun was midway through the morning sky, and the poplar leaves twisted in a cool breeze; the underside of them lighter than the tops, like the belly of a sunfish. Construction work had shut down for a couple of hours to accommodate her investigation. 

The forest was teeming, fecund, half-choked with chlorophyll, the air filled with the high whine of katydids screaming at her from the canopy. She felt like she had stepped into another epoch; prehistoric and riotous with life.

The big equipment had churned a lot of the forest floor into a chunky, muddy mess, and her hope of finding evidence -- if there was any to be found -- seemed about as likely as her mother converting to Buddhism. It probably wasn’t worth setting up a grid. 

Her thoughts drifted to Mulder as she stepped over trout lily and larch. What would he find that she might miss? His intuition was otherworldly, and even after seven years -- especially after seven years -- he could make connections she hadn’t ever considered. And he’d never once looked down on her for it. He’d never once treated her as anything less than an equal. If anything, he put her on a pedestal she didn’t feel she deserved. He was erudite and occasionally conscientious. He loved her with a fierceness she didn’t dare contemplate.

Staring at the weathered heart and initials carved into it, she decided to start at the pine tree and work her way out, hoping the conservation officer would arrive soon and perhaps let her know what she was looking  _ for _ . Scully reached out a hand and touched the bark of the tree -- it was warm, though the trunk had been in the shade. It gave off a pleasant, earthy scent, and she pulled her hand back, tapping her fingers together, sticky with sap. 

She heard something behind her and turned, seeing a tall brunette in a greyish green uniform making her way toward Scully through the bracken. Her hair was pulled up tightly into a low bun, giving her a severe look, but she wore a smile and had a pleasant mien. The woman raised a friendly hand. 

“You Special Agent Scully?” she called out. 

“I am,” Scully called back, returning the smile and stepping forward. 

“I’m Polaski,” the officer said, shaking Scully’s hand as she stepped over a fallen branch. “I have to say it’s refreshing to find you’re a woman.”

“Likewise,” Scully said. The woman took a moment to look around the forest and construction site.

“Geez,” Polaski said, “I like the woods better when they stay woods.” She straightened. “So how did you need my assistance? My sergeant only told me that the FBI was working a case and needed a local flora/fauna expert. He said he didn’t know what the case was.”

Scully wasn’t sure she did either. 

“We’ve got some victims experiencing… something akin to hallucinations. The only thing the victims have in common is their presence at this site. The only time all the victims were in the same place was when they all shared a meal in this general area. I was hoping you might assist me in identifying any possible naturally occurring hallucinogens or flora containing psychotropic elements. Are there any you’re aware of that grow locally?”

Polaski nodded, the leather of her utility belt creaking as she leaned back contemplatively. 

“Off the top of my head… there’s a couple of mushrooms: fly agaric, big laughing gym. Then there’s unripe red mulberries, though it doesn’t affect everyone the same. And I’ve known some old timers who’ve used sassafras.”

“In what way?” Scully asked. 

“Safrole,” Polaski answered, “the oil from the sassafras root can be used to make... whatcha call it, MDA.”

“Methylenedioxyamphetamine?”

Polaski nodded. “Makes better root beer, you ask me.”

“Would you be able to survey the area with me, let me know if you see any of the flora you mentioned?”

“Let’s get to it,” Polaski suggested.

They made their way in concentric circles, the conservation officer occasionally pointing out this or that, none of which were what they were looking for. By the time they’d gotten to the area around the entrance of the site, the sun was at midday high and they hadn’t found a thing.

“Can you explain to me the nature of the hallucinations?” Polanski finally asked. 

Scully felt Mulder’s own words form within the confines of her mouth and smiled at the intrusion. What could she tell this woman without sounding crazy? 

“The victims appear to be, at the very least, sharing dreams. With physical ramifications.”

“Such as?” Polaski asked, though her tone was of open curiosity rather than the doubtful disdain Scully had been half expecting. With only a momentary pause, Scully opened up to her, giving her some of the stranger details of the case. 

“Well, shit,” Polaski said, and Scully wasn’t sure if there had yet been a more succinct reaction to the case. 

“Pretty much.”

Polaski leaned against a yellow articulated dump truck that was parked just within the tree line off the highway. 

“Sorry I couldn’t be of more help, Agent Scully,” she said. 

“On the contrary, you were a tremendous help, Officer Polaski, I thank you.”

“This case,” Polaski hedged, “sounds pretty odd. You want me to take a look at state-wide records, see if I can pull anything with similar overtones?”

“If you’re offering, I’ll accept, but are you sure you’ve got the time?”

“Beats getting mosquito bites while busting anglers without a license. Let me take the afternoon, see what I can find.” 

With that, Polaski pushed off the Caterpillar and nodded once at Scully, who followed her back to their respective vehicles and pointed her internal compass toward Mulder. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

_ Best Western Motel _

_ Petoskey, Michigan _

_ 11:23am _

From the dozen or so phone calls that he’d made, it seemed the school had been run by nuns from the Holy Childhood sect, which had been a part of the Diocese of Gaylord, a town forty minutes southeast. However, when Mulder called the Diocese of Gaylord, which had been established in 1971, he was redirected to the Diocese of Grand Rapids, a further three hours downstate because it had been overseeing Holy Childhood before ‘71. School records seemed to be scattered to the four winds, though an older secretary in Gaylord told Mulder in confidence that she remembered the Mother Superior had been close with the priest at the St. Francis Xavier church the next town over -- otherwise, school records would be “forthcoming,” whatever that meant. 

Mulder brought a hand to his temple as he relayed this information to Scully.

“Any luck in the woods?” he asked. 

“No,” Scully said, “though the conservation officer I worked with offered to look through state cases for anything similar. Otherwise, we got bupkis.”

“Not quite bupkis,” Mulder said, handing her a sheet of paper. “I went through old newspaper articles and was able to track down some old pictures of students from the school. Those from the last thirty years had some names included on the captions and I was able to cross reference the names with records from the local Secretary of State office. This is a list of former students I was able to track down that are still local.” 

Scully looked over the list. 

“There’s not many,” she said, looking up at him. There were only three.

It was indeed a pitifully small number for the hours of work he’d put in. If he never sat in front of another microfiche machine, he might die happy.

“There’s not. But it’s a place to start.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I figure we can in terview some former students and maybe get more insight into the area. Up until two months ago, the only thing up there was the school. Maybe we’ll find a connection.”

“It’s as good a plan as any,” she said. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

_ Bay View Inn, _

_ Harbor Springs, Michigan  _

_ 1:34pm _

They found Argyle Petoskey at his job, waiting tables at an upscale inn and restaurant that had been converted from a Victorian mansion in one of the chautauquas of Harbor Springs. The day was turning hot; Mulder had left his jacket in the car, and even Scully had opted to wear only a blouse on top, changing from her hiking gear back into her pencil skirt and heels in the library bathroom.

Argyle’s manager pointed them out back, where they found him leaning against the wall of the loading dock smoking a cigarette, dressed in a restaurant uniform version of a tuxedo, the pre-tied bowtie hanging loose around his unbuttoned collar. When they introduced themselves, he flicked the cigarette off into a puddle and jumped down to greet them, leaking smoke from his mouth. 

“What’s this about?”

“We’re looking into the Holy Childhood school,” Mulder said, assessing the man before him. He had short, dark hair and intense brown eyes and what Mulder supposed passed for a mustache. Argyle’s eyebrows rose at this. 

“You mean the federal government is actually looking into the shit that happened at Indian schools?”

Mulder, interest piqued, made a mental note to further investigate and simply said, “Can you tell us about your experiences there?”

Argyle took a breath and blew it out, then fished a foil-wrapped stick of wintergreen gum from his pocket and shoved it in his mouth. 

“The school was actually pretty good for me,” he shrugged, “I didn’t come from the most stable home. I got my diploma, kept my nose clean. And I, uh, wasn’t on the receiving end of some of the bad shit that went down.”

“Abuse?” Scully finally spoke up. 

Argyle gave her a once-over, his eyes lingering at her cross necklace. 

“Like I said, not to me. But I did know some people it probably happened to.”

Mulder nodded. “What was it like when you were there? How many kids?” 

“Not many when I was there. I graduated in ‘82 right before they shut it down. After ‘78, a lot of Native families stopped sending their kids. But it was okay. Taught me how to play sports, kept me out of trouble.” He hunched up a shoulder. “Kept me away from my dad’s belt. I made a lot of friends.”

“I didn’t see any playing fields up there, where did you guys practice your sports?” Mulder asked.

“Oh, we’d play lacrosse on the front lawn in front of the school until the nuns yelled, but otherwise the local high school let us use their gym and fields and stuff.”

Argyle looked over his shoulder at the door. 

“What about out past the school? Looks like the school owned a lot of the land up there. Anyone ever experience anything strange out in the forest?” Scully asked. 

“Like love by the dashboard light?” Argyle chuckled. “No, we didn’t go out in those woods. All the kids said it was haunted. We stayed away.”

“Haunted?” Mulder asked, “by whom?”

“A dead student? Some hunter? An old tribal chief? Your guess is as good as mine. I heard ‘em all. Probably an urban legend. I bet every boarding school has one. Listen, are we almost done here? My shift is about to start.”

“Sure,” Mulder said, handing him a business card, “you mind giving us a list of some of your friends from the school? You don’t need to do it right now.”

“And get blamed for sending the Feds to their door? Fat chance. Listen,” he said, jumping back up onto the loading dock, and tucking the card into a back pocket, “I’ll put the word out. You staying locally?”

Mulder nodded. “The Best Western on US-31.”

Argyle nodded back, waved. “Good luck.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

_ Petoskey, Michigan _

_ 4:56pm _

The second student on their list -- Stan Skippergosh -- told them roughly the same thing that Argyle Petoskey had, only in a far less succinct way. It was nearing 5:00pm by the time they headed toward the house of the last student on their list. 

The road that led out of town turned country at a stop light: to the west toward the lake were businesses and doctors’ offices, churches and schools, but past the stop light it was all pasture. The road dipped with the countryside, and then climbed up steeply, the banks on either side covered in field grass and Queen Anne’s Lace, the air thick with the buzz of insects and the rich tang of grass blades leeching oxygen. It was mostly farmland with the occasional suburban house, small yards carved out of fields and dotted with swingsets and boxes of geraniums. 

Leonard Naganashe lived past the fields and farmland, past where the forest began, and Scully’s Mapquest printout was not quite cutting it -- they had to double back twice and ended up finding his road on their own. The driveway wound like a river through the trees, fresh gravel popping under their tires, and Mulder only noticed the tops of the trees when Scully pointed them out. 

“Mulder,” Scully said, leaning forward and squinting through the windshield, “look at the canopy.”

At first it was only one or two trees, the tops of which had been blown off and charred, but as they approached the house it seemed as though nearly all the tall trees surrounding the house were similarly affected, a few with the tops blown off, but many, more of them affected than not, with long perpendicular lines scarring their trunks. Hemlock or birch, beech or maple, none were spared. 

The house, in a small clearing at the end of the drive, was a quaint one-story ranch that had simple metal finials attached to all four corners. Lightning rods. Mulder flashed on Darin Peter Oswald and gave Scully a significant look over the console. 

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Mulder said, throwing the sedan into park and cutting the engine. 

The heat hit them like a force when they stepped out of the air conditioned confines of the car, the humidity as thick as bisque. Mulder pulled uncomfortably at his tie as they stepped up onto the landing and pushed the doorbell. When no sound came from inside the house, Scully gave the door two sharp raps. A moment later, a woman appeared, her face wearing a look of wary apprehension. She spoke through the screen door, but did not open it.

“What do you want?” she inquired. 

“Is this the residence of Leonard Naganashe?” Scully ventured. 

“Who’s asking?” 

Mulder and Scully both pulled out their badges, holding them up briefly at face-level. 

“What’s he done?” the woman asked.

“Nothing,” Mulder said, repocketing his badge. “Leonard attended the Holy Childhood Boarding School in Harbor Springs. We’re trying to get some background. He’s one of the few former students that still lives in the area.”

The woman snorted. “Nothing good ever came from that school. Leonard included,” she replied. “I should know.”

“Did you attend the school as well, ma’am?” Scully queried from beside Mulder’s elbow.

The woman didn’t answer at first, and Mulder could see her face cloud over.

“I graduated in ‘82,” she finally said. 

“What’s your name?” Mulder asked. 

“Mary.”

“Can we talk to you about the school?” he requested. 

“No,” Mary said curtly. “Leonard took off about a month ago. You find him, you tell him I got papers for him to sign.”

With that, the door closed in their faces. 

XxXxXxXxXxX 

_ Best Western Motel  _

_ Petoskey, Michigan _

_ 7:23pm _

They were north of the 45th Parallel -- closer to the north pole than the equator and the summer days seem to last forever -- it was light before 5:00, it was dark after 10:00. The sun shone on and on.

Their hotel was neither the worst nor the best they’d ever stayed in -- just off the highway, but tucked back into the trees of a cedar swamp, each room opened out onto the small parking lot with suburban woods beyond it. Their respective rooms were on either end of the long row, and they’d set up camp in Scully’s, at the far end away from the motel office. Mulder closed the door on the damp cedar brine and kicked off his shoes. 

The A/C unit rattled in the window but was cooling the room admirably. It was late and Scully was on her second piece of pizza after realizing that she’d had nothing all day but a stale mini bagel from the motel’s ‘continental’ spread and a hot slug of bad coffee she’d made from the little pot on the small vanity outside her bathroom. 

“Are you still thinking this is some kind of mass hallucination?” Mulder asked her around a mouthful of sausage and pepper.

She could tell he was feeling her out, gauging her hostility toward his more outlandish theories. 

“I don’t know what to think, Mulder,” she said. “The details of this case, so far as we have uncovered them, leave a lot more questions than answers.” 

“I will give you that.” He sighed, wiped his mouth, crumpled up the napkin and threw it in a perfect arc into the trash can. She gave him the ghost of an impressed smile.

“You think it’s a haunting of some sort?” she walked her own napkin, and the flimsy paper plate the pizzeria had given them, over to the trash can and deposited them sensibly. 

He gave a mock shiver. “Don’t get me too excited Scully, we’re in the same motel room after hours.”

She wondered briefly what he would do if she walked over to the chair he was sitting in and straddled his lap. If she wrapped his tie twice around her fist and pulled his generous mouth to hers. Would his eyes be startled? Would they glaze over in lust? 

Her indecorous fantasy was interrupted by the ringing of her phone. She answered it. 

“Agent Scully, this is Officer Polaski,” said the voice on the other end, “I’m sorry to call so late, but I think I may have something for you.” Scully waved Mulder over and he sat next to her, the mattress dipping below his weight and pushing her into his side. She tilted the phone so they could both hear. “It’s a pretty old case -- from the 50s -- and some of the details of the case notes have been lost over time, but I found a record of an arrest in the woods where you and I were today.”

“Definitely not too late,” Scully reassured her. “What was the charge?” 

“Murder,” Polaski said, and Scully tilted her head slightly to find Mulder’s eyes. “You want me to fax it over?” Polaski went on. 

Mulder rose and hurried over to the dresser where a pad of motel stationery sat, the phone and fax numbers at the bottom. 

“Please,” Scully said, and then rattled off the number as Mulder held it up for her. 

“It’s on its way,” Polaski told her, and Mulder was already slipping on his shoes. 

“Be right back,” he said after Scully had thanked her and disconnected, and he trotted out the door toward the motel office. 

He was back a few minutes later, shuffling through a few leaves of paper that wafted the smell of hot toner in her direction. “Polaski was right,” he said, handing her a couple, “this is pretty thin.”

They both sat on her bed and traded sheets of paper, reading through the case file. 

Franklin Henry Donaughy had been arrested while camping in the woods not far from the Holy Childhood Indian School on the night of November 14, 1952, by two Emmet County Sheriff deputies. His wife, Denise Donaughy, aged 37, had been found dead -- from a gunshot wound to the chest -- in their home in Harrison Township, Michigan (a town located three hours to the south, Scully discovered after a quick map consult and a brief mental calculation). Franklin had claimed to have been hunting and camping up north for the four days beforehand and had no part in her killing, or so he said to the sheriff deputies. There were several pages missing from the file, it appeared, particularly those of Franklin Donaughy’s statements to police. 

Mulder handed Scully the coroner’s report, which she looked over. 

“This is odd,” she noted, after a moment, and handed the paper back to Mulder. “It says here that the body was discovered sitting up in a lounge chair in their living room under a blanket, next to a switched on radio. There was no blood spray discovered at the scene, but the body had both an entry and exit wound, so they assumed she’d been killed at a different location and then placed in the living room.” She leaned closer to him, pointed to the page. “But, Mulder, the recorded amount of blood that seeped into the chair was almost four liters. That’s nearly all the blood a body has--”

“--So she couldn’t have been killed at a different location and then moved,” Mulder concluded.

“Exactly, it makes no sense.”

“What else does it say?” he asked. 

“Not much,” she said, frustrated, “it’s incomplete.”

Mulder blew out a raspberry and shoved his palm tiredly into his eye socket.

“I’ll call the Sheriff’s office tomorrow and see if they have a more complete record. Barring that I can always swim again with the microfiche, see what the local papers said in ‘52.”

“I’ll help,” she smiled at him and then shoved him lightly in the shoulder. “Let’s get some sleep for now, huh?”

He leaned his arm onto hers for a moment and she saw a glimmer of something brewing in his chlorite eyes. A moment later he turned away and then stood from the bed. 

“We should,” he agreed, and made his way to the door, throwing her one last glance before closing it softly behind him. 

She felt as though she had barely closed her eyes when there was a pounding on the same door. She looked at the glow of the alarm clock next to the bed. It was nearly 1:30 a.m. 

She threw open the door to find Mulder threading the tie he’d worn earlier in the day back through the collar of a dress shirt. 

“Hank Poquette just called me,” he said. “He found Moira in their bed, unresponsive.”

“Did he call 911?” Scully asked on a hop of adrenaline.

“Paramedics are on their way,” Mulder said, already moving back in the direction of his own room, “I’ll meet you at the car in five.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

_ Cross Village, Michigan _

_ 2:40am _

The forest around the Poquette property was awash in blue and red light as Mulder and Scully drove up the winding driveway, the house itself lit up with the headlights and search beams of several police cruisers. Mulder pulled in behind one and killed the engine. 

“This doesn’t look good,” he said to Scully, who remained quiet, her face grim. 

The Poquette’s black dog was whining from its chained position beside the tree, its eyes never once leaving the house as they walked past. EMTs exited the house pushing a stretcher just as Mulder and Scully got to the bottom of the porch steps -- a person laid out beneath a sheet that was pulled over their face. 

The agents backed away to let the paramedics pass and shared a look. When they got to the front door, they were met by a confused young sheriff’s deputy who blanched at their IDs. He called over his superior who appeared to be the Sheriff himself, with whom Mulder shook hands. Scully stood back slightly, her hands crossed in front of her. 

Hank Poquette sat at the counter in his kitchen, staring blankly ahead, head in his hands. 

After Mulder explained -- with as few details as possible -- what they were doing in the area and at the Poquette house, the Sheriff agreed to let them have a few minutes with Hank before they took him into the station to get his statement. 

The deputies migrated to the far end of the living room by the door before Mulder spoke quietly to Hank, Scully keeping close at Mulder’s elbow. 

“What happened tonight?” Mulder coaxed, as kindly as he could. 

Hank didn’t look at either of them; his eyes glassy. 

“I had a dream,” he said blankly. “When I woke up… I found her like that. Next to me.”

“What happened in your dream, Hank?” Mulder asked. 

Hank finally looked up, a deep groove etched between his eyebrows. He took a shallow breath. 

“She died.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

_ Best Western Motel _

_ Petoskey, Michigan _

_ July 2, 1999 _

_ 7:30am _

Scully was dressed and had just unwrapped the towel from her freshly shampooed hair when she heard Mulder at her door. They had left a nearly catatonic Hank Poquette at the local police station at 4:30 a.m., and Scully, bleary-eyed with barely any sleep, had stumbled into the shower thirty minutes earlier. 

Hank had said very little when deputies questioned him, simply laying out the timeline of he and Moira’s evening (dinner at a local bar with friends and a 10:00 p.m. bedtime) and had told them that he’d woken to find Moira in bed next to him, unresponsive. It wasn’t until he was in the small interrogation room alone with Mulder and Scully and had a hot cup of coffee in front of him that he’d told them both his dream: she’d fallen from a tall building while he was running to catch her. 

“I always have dark dreams,” he’d said cryptically to Scully before they left, his eyes haunted. The Sheriff had mentioned that they didn’t have enough evidence to hold him and that he would be released later in the day.

Mulder moved into her room and tossed a newspaper onto Scully’s unmade bed. 

“Interesting entertainment article got picked up by the local paper,” he said, nodding to the periodical. “Page four.”

Scully set down the hairbrush she’d been using on her wet hair and picked up the paper. 

  
  


_ July 1, 1999 _

_ by Megan McCullough, AP _

**_TOM CRUISE’S DISAPPEARING ACT_ **

_ An impressive PR stunt was successfully pulled off last night at the premiere of the new Warner Bros. tentpole ‘ _ **_The Magician_ ** _.’  _

_ Star Tom Cruise was walking the red carpet in front of the Bruin Theater in Westwood when he vanished, ostensibly into thin air. The stunt was captured on film by the press and fans alike, who said Cruise was glad-handing and giving autographs to the fans along the velvet rope when he disappeared.  _

_ “He was standing in front of me one second and gone the next,” said fan and witness Amy Michelson, “I couldn’t believe it. We were all kind of freaked out and scared for Tom but then he came back about twenty minutes later.” Witnesses say the star reappeared at the exact spot he had disappeared from about a half an hour later, startling studio and security personnel who had surrounded the area. “He looked totally shell shocked when he reappeared,” Michelson went on, “and he had smears of lipstick all over his mouth. I’m not sure where he went, but I wish it had been with me!” _

_ Sources close to Cruise say that the star was surprised and upset by what they refer to as an ‘uncontracted and unsafe stunt’ and has been looking into lawsuits aimed at Warner Bros. as well as ‘ _ **_The Magician_ ** _ ’s’ executive producer David Copperfield. _

_ When initially asked for comment minutes after the incident, the studio was close-lipped. Press inquiries as to why police were called to the scene in Westwood immediately following the disappearance were chalked up to “miscommunication.”  _

_ As of this morning, the studio seems to have changed its tune and released the following statement: _

_ “We at Warner Bros. are always happy to work with Mr. Cruise, and are very proud of ‘ _ **_The Magician_ ** _.’ We hope audiences will go to theaters to see it before it, too, disappears!” _

Scully looked up at Mulder. 

“You don’t think…”

“Lindsey Conrad is a Dreamer, and you saw the posters in her kitchen.”

“Jesus, Mulder.”

“We need to stop this thing Scully. What if one of these people dreams of the President dying? What if some foreign government figures out what’s going on up here and starts using these people for assassinations or -- hell, what if  _ our _ government does?”

His hair was sticking up in places as though he’d been running his hands through it. Scully looked up at him. “What is ‘this thing,’ Mulder? What the hell are we dealing with here?”

“Something is pulling people into the dreams of others, Scully. Whether you believe it or not. And whatever the mechanism is -- we need to find out what it is, how it works, and how to stop it.”

The explanation Mulder was pushing could not possibly be true. Could it? She stayed mute and could see the color rise in his cheeks. 

“People’s lives are at stake Scully,” he said darkly. 

She felt anger building inside as well but pushed it back down. 

“Maybe we’ll find something in Moira’s autopsy,” she finally said. 

Mulder nodded, suddenly looking as tired as she felt. 

“I’m going to head back to the library while you’re slicing and dicing -- see what I can turn up on this hunter case Polaski sent us.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

_ Emmet County Morgue _

_ Northern Michigan Regional Hospital _

_ Petoskey, Michigan _

_ 9:34am _

The county medical examiner was as near to retirement as any she’d ever met. He’d reached the stage of male aging where the hair on his forehead receded, only to grow wildly out of his ears. His fingernails had yellowed and ridged and his eyebrows seemed to crawl across his forehead like hairy grey caterpillars. Nevertheless, he was friendly and polite, if a bit hard of hearing.

“Edward Farrugia,” he said, extending a hand over the body of Moira Poquette. Scully shook it firmly, and found the skin of his palm warm and dry. She’d shaken a lot of ME’s hands in the subterranean dark of various morgues, and found many to be roughly the same texture and temperature as their charges.

“Dana Scully,” she said. “Did you receive the police report from the Sheriff’s office?”

“I did,” Dr. Farrugia informed her, “though I didn’t look at it -- I was just about to. I like to do my initial exam without knowing any of the details. Start from scratch. No preconceived notions to bring into it.”

Scully nodded. She liked that. 

“So you’ve already looked at the body?” she asked. The EMTs had left with Moira’s body before she got a chance to see it herself. 

“Just an initial visual exam. I’d be happy to share my thoughts,” he said. 

“Let me scrub up and we can go over it together?”

He smiled at her and nodded, then headed back into his office while she found the small locker room nearby to scrub in and change. There was a hot pot of coffee on a sideboard table in the locker room itself and she threw back several large, hasty sips.

When she walked back in ten minutes later, she found the Medical Examiner in his office staring at his desk, his face darkly set. He had the police report in his hand. She cleared her throat and he looked up.

“Are you ready to get started?” she asked politely. 

“I am,” he said, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “But Dr. Scully… Nothing here adds up.” 

“How so?” Scully asked. 

Dr. Farrugia glanced toward the examination room where Moira Poquette’s body rested under a sheet. He held up the copy of the police report. 

“From what it says here, this woman went out to dinner last night with her husband and some friends, went home, went to bed and her husband found her unresponsive around midnight. There were multiple witnesses at the bar placing her there not more than two hours before her death. So she eats, goes home, gets in bed. That timetable indicates her death was likely caused by heart attack, stroke, aneurysm -- I’m sure I don’t need to list them all for you,” he went on, “you’re an expert.”

She nodded. 

“Agent Scully, this woman died from a fall,” he said. “A pretty big one.”

She walked into the exam room and moved to the table before he’d even finished talking, peeling back the sheet covering Moira Poquette’s body. She heard Dr. Farrugia shuffle in behind her as she stared down in disbelief.

There was no blood, except for a small trickle from a clearly fractured skull. On her torso, her skin had split to the length of about ten or fifteen centimeters right above the hip bone, and a quantity of her small intestine was hanging out from the laceration. They were textbook injuries sustained from a fall of eighty to a hundred feet.

“This is…” she started to say, her tone one of disbelief. 

“Yes,” Dr. Farrugia agreed. Their eyes met over the body and he moved to join her on the opposite side. 

“Shall we see what we find on the inside?” she asked him after several moments. 

“Let’s.” 

XxXxXxXxXxX

_ The Carnegie Library  _

_ Petoskey, Michigan _

_ 3:30pm _

Scully found Mulder beyond the stacks. The Carnegie Library was old, stately, a sturdy box-like structure with stone pillars in front, built with money endowed from Andrew Carnegie himself. Scully had to go to the back of the building and down a set of stairs to the basement, where she found Mulder sitting at a tabletop surrounded by rolls of microfiche, glasses perched on his nose, a screen flickering rapidly in front of him.

“Martha?” he said, as he heard her steps approach, “Let’s go another month or two ahead, see if we can find some articles from the trial.”

He turned when she touched his shoulder, his face blossoming into pleased surprise when he saw it was her. 

“Hey,” he said, smiling, whatever slight animosity he’d been feeling towards her earlier in the morning dissipating into the air. “Sorry, I thought you were the librarian who’s been helping me out.”

At this, said librarian came around a corner, a small basket filled with boxes of microfiche rolls slung over her elbow. She was likely around seventy, with bright white hair cut into a fluffy bob, symmetrically cut bangs framing her forehead. She looked at Scully expectantly. 

“Can I help you?” she asked Scully. 

“Martha, this is the woman I told you about: my partner, Agent Scully,” Mulder said. 

She gave Scully a quick up and down. 

“Well,” she said, “it’s nice to meet you, Agent Scully. I must say, when pressed, Agent Mulder conceded that you were quite lovely, but I now see why he turned so coy. My dear, you’re a vision.”

Scully felt her cheeks color.

“Martha is a shameless flirt,” Mulder said, his eyes on the tabletop.

“And a matchmaker,” Martha said to Scully, winking. 

Mulder pointedly changed the subject, “Do you have late February and early March?”

“Right here,” Martha said, unslinging the basket from her elbow and passing it over to Mulder. She grabbed a nearby chair and pushed it in next to Mulder’s own. “Have a seat, love.”

Scully took the proffered chair and sat, giving Mulder a look as the woman left them on a whirl of white hair, leaving the faintest trace of Chanel No. 5 in her wake. 

“You made a friend,” Scully said, teasing. 

“Yeah, well, I spent a week here yesterday morning,” he replied. “How was the autopsy?”

“Illuminating.” 

“Yeah?” he said, turning to her in full, “Tell me.”

She sighed. “Three guesses.”

“She died from a fall,” Mulder said, a little reverence in his voice. 

Scully nodded. “That’s what the body says.”

Mulder let out a long, low whistle. “Do you believe me now?” he asked, running his thumb along his jaw bone. It took her a moment to look away. 

“I’m closer to believing,” she acknowledged. 

“I guess I’ll take it,” he said after a moment. 

“Have you talked to Hank?” she asked him. 

He shook his head. “Sheriff drove him home this morning. I’ll head out there when we’re done here and check on him.”

“Hopefully he’ll get some sleep,” Scully said. 

“Hopefully he won’t,” Mulder said significantly. 

Scully sank into the chair Martha had pulled out for her. 

“Have you found anything?” she asked. 

Mulder shook his head and passed her a couple of rolls of microfiche. 

“Local paper,” he said. “They had a blurb on the arrest of Franklin Donaughy, but nothing else. Probably not that surprising since the ‘murder’ was downstate. Now I’m searching through for articles about the trial to see if there’s anything there.” He nodded toward a second viewing machine further down the table. “Care to join me?”

She pulled the basket of rolls toward her. 

“You take February ‘53, I’ll take March?”

XxXxXxXxXxX

They searched for two hours before Scully left to bring them back dinner and Dramamine. Mulder was just wadding up the butcher paper from his ham on rye when Scully got his attention, waving her salad fork in front of his face.

“I think I’ve got it,” she said. 

He let out a soft, satisfied belch and then scooted his chair closer to hers. 

It was a front page story: 

_ March 2, 1953 _

_ by VJ Hramic _

**_Not Guilty: Hunter Proclaims Innocence_ **

Mulder skimmed the article until he found what he was looking for. 

“There,” he said, pointing to the screen, “his alibi -- he’d been hunting and camping in the woods near the school for four days during the time of his wife’s murder. State’s evidence is all circumstantial except for the gun. Same caliber and ammunition as his hunting rifle.”

“Hmm,” said Scully, still not convinced. 

They scrolled on for another week and a half until finally:

**_Guilty!_ **

There was a picture of a haunted looking Franklin Donaughy being led from the county courthouse in handcuffs, surrounded by fedora-wearing reporters and the large drums of fifty-year-old camera flashes. 

“Jesus,” Scully said and Mulder leaned forward when she pointed to small print at the end of the article on page 4, below the fold. 

“ _ Mr. Donaughy repeatedly shouted the phrase ‘But it was only in my dreams! She only died in my dreams!’ to reporters as he was led away to the Gladwin County Jail. He has been since evaluated and sent to the Northern Michigan Asylum in Traverse City to receive treatment for what doctors are calling a psychotic break.” _

The wooden chair creaked when he leaned back in it. 

They were both silent for almost a full minute, the hum of the microfiche machines the only sound other than their breathing. 

Finally, Mulder rose and spoke. 

“I’m going to drive out to the Poquette residence to check on Hank,” he said formally. “Would you, ah, make a call for me?” She nodded up at him from the chair. “I’ve been playing phone tag with the priest at St. Francis Xavier. See if you can get in touch with him and set up a meeting tomorrow -- I want to see what he can tell us about the headmistress of Holy Childhood.”

Mulder walked out to the sedan with a headache. He rolled the windows all the way down as he drove down the sunset road. 

  
  
  
  
  



	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: There is a brief mention of suicide in this chapter.

_...The traffic lights they turn blue tomorrow _

_ And shine their emptiness down on my bed _

_ The tiny island sags downstream _

_ 'Cause the life that they lived is dead _

_ And the wind screams Mary... _

  
  
  


_ Best Western Motel _

_ Petoskey, Michigan _

_ July 2, 1999 _

_ 9:01pm _

She had showered at the morgue and was only going to lay on the bed for a minute after kicking off her shoes. She knew she needed to change -- at least take off her bra -- and brush her teeth. Wash her face. And she definitely shouldn’t close her eyes...

_ She is naked in the bed, under the covers, face down. She knows this is her motel room, but it doesn't look exactly like it should. There's a framed picture of Queequeg upside down on the bedside table and the walls are the pale green of the Quantico Morgue. There’s a scattering of knickknacks perched on the top of the headboard; a delicate porcelain shepherdess and two sheep, their mouths cracked wide in a silent ceramic bleat. The room has a shimmery quality and her vision feels like it’ll dolly zoom with the Vertigo Effect if she so much as takes a breath. _

_ The waft of cold air on the skin of her ass feels like a silken kiss as the sheet is lifted off of her. And then his hands -- Mulder’s hands, somehow she knows it’s him -- are on her hips, pulling her up as if she were on a hinge, ass in the air like a dog in heat, presenting her soaked sex like an invitation. She feels the blunt tip of his erection once, twice as he rubs it up her slick seam, and she groans, her face still pressed into the mattress.  _

_ “Scully,” he says, his voice sounding like it’s coming from underwater. “Watch. I want you to look. I need you to see.” _

_ She pushes herself up just enough so that she can look between her legs, past her sensitive, swinging breasts, to see Mulder’s pale muscular legs behind her, his thick cock poised at her entrance.  _

_ “Do you see it?” his muffled voice says. All she can do is nod dumbly, her tongue so thick in her mouth that she can’t speak.  _

_ And then, _ oh and then _. He slowly pushes into her, his blazing fingers pulling hard at her hips, his hot, heavy cock penetrating her at the most glacial, maddening pace, filling her to her goddamn throat. He pulls back just as slowly, and she whimpers at the loss -- a practically juvenile whine. And just before he slips all of the way out, he slides back in with a sharp snap of his hips, hard. The blunt end of him hits her cervix and she can practically see stars. She has never felt so sexual in her life, never as swollen and ripe, never as wet. It’s like what she imagines drugs feel like; euphoria and ecstacy rolling through her, knocking loose thoughts best kept buried.  _

_ He grunts once and then he’s a beast unleashed, ramming into her, splitting her pussy in two. She cannot get enough of it as he plunders her like a port wench, three sheets to the wind on rum and cock drunk.  _

_ This is not how she pictured their coming together, how she’d always thought they would. After what had happened in his hallway, after New Years, she thought it would be a whispered confession after a long case -- a lingering look and a long slow kiss. A panting, aching coupling that was so, so long overdue. Not like this -- never like this -- like two rutting beasts, fingers gouging her flesh, the wet slap of their bodies, the ceramic sheep shattering on the floor. _

_ Her groans, the sound a ripple up her back. She feels him grow impossibly large within her, feels his pulsing orgasm, and then he pulls out, all the way out, and she cries out with frustration -- and then he continues to spurt hotly, thickly onto her back. He slaps her -- actually slaps her -- hard -- smacking his seed onto the skin of her tattoo while he growls “MINE” and she-- _

\--Startled awake, the smack from her dream practically echoing off the walls of her hotel room. She sat up in awareness, almost shame, still dressed in the clothes she’d been wearing before falling into bed. She was alone.

She took a hitching breath, then another. Her heart started to slow when she felt a gentle trickle from her center. The skin of her back felt tender, as though she had actually been hit, and when she pulled down the waist on the front of her pants, she saw eight red finger-sized marks on the skin over her hip bones. They began to bruise before her eyes. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

Mulder fell to the ground on his knees, the sidewalk biting into his flesh through the thin fabric of his suit pants. He heard the tink and plastic skitter of his room key as it flew from his left hand and slid to a stop on the sidewalk several feet in front of him. 

He blinked to awareness and found himself just outside his hotel door, the night air around him cool and humid and alive with the sound of crickets and the roar of frogs. Right where he’d been when he was sucked into…  _ oh fuck _ . He’d been walking back from the car after having checked on Hank Poquette and -- 

The memory of it blazed through him like quicksilver. Scully, ass in the air on her bed like a wanton, her hot tight heat sucking him in. He’d been powerless. An automaton. A puppet of flesh and bone with consciousness but no power. 

He looked down at his hand. It was still red and stinging from the slap he’d unwillingly delivered to Scully’s tattoo. And it was covered in the cooling wet slip of his own semen. 

The realization hit him like a blow to the solar plexus. He’d been pulled into Scully’s dream. Scully had become a Dreamer -- and Scully had dreamed of  _ him _ . Of  _ them _ . He pulled himself woozily to his feet, the full impact of the knowledge, that somewhere in her innermost thoughts they did  _ that _ had yet to fully permeate.  _ Scully, _ he thought again, panic like a rising tide within him. He stumbled to her door and pounded on it. 

She opened it a moment later, dressed in the clothes she’d been wearing earlier in the day, her hair loose and wispy around her head, a pillow crease on one cheek. 

“Do you believe me now?!” he said, breathing heavily. 

“Mulder, what-” she started, and he shoved in past her and whirled around.

“You’re a Dreamer,” he said. It sounded, even to his own ears, like an accusation. His emotions were like a Jackson Pollock painting, all aberrant splashes of libidinous titillation, excitement, of alarm and shame, somehow coalescing into an overriding and irrational hostility. 

“What are you talking about?” she crossed her arms in front of herself protectively. 

“I was sucked into your dream just now, Scully,” he said, “And I was returned when you woke up about a minute ago.” She paled but remained silent. He held up his hand, it was still tacky with his own seed. “I think if you look at your back, you’ll find it’s pretty red right now. In the size and shape of  _ this. _ ” She lowered herself onto the bed, looking dazed. “That was your dream, was it not?”

She blinked rapidly and wouldn't meet his eye. His breath started to regulate and he pulled back a bit, trying to calm down. Panic -- and something else -- was buzzing through him like a hive of angry bees. 

“How-“ she started, her voice small, “What happened?”

“I had just gotten back from checking on Hank. I was walking to my room and then -- and then I wasn’t.” He gave her a pointed look and she blushed. “It was like Moira said. I had no control. I was a puppet in someone else’s show.” She finally looked at him. “Yours,” he finished.

“No,” she said. Her face was all disbelief and denial. “It’s not possible.”

“You’re denying that that was your dream?” he felt a blossom of anger unfurl in his chest. 

“Mulder, dreams are just neurons firing. It’s not a physical event!”

“That was about as physical as it gets, Scully,” he hissed. “Your perfect ass in the air and little sheep shattered on the floor, you want to tell me that’s not physical?!” He looked down at his tacky hand. 

She looked horrified and he reined his emotions in a step and took a deep breath. 

“Tell me I’m wrong.”

She looked at him, and he could tell that she wouldn’t. Couldn’t.

The fight was draining out of him, but he didn’t want to let her off the hook. “How often do I make an appearance?”

She lowered her head. “I -- I don’t know what to say,” she said. 

He felt sapped, from his balls to the top of his head. 

“That was some dream, Scully,” he said.

“Mulder, it’s-” she started, paused. Mulder let the silence hang in the air. “It’s perfectly normal for people to have dreams of a sexual nature about friends and acquaintances -- anyone you spend a fair amount of time with. Dreams are related to waking-life experiences and are associated with REM theta activity -- it’s just the brain’s way of processing emotional memory. It’s not a conscious thought. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Mulder let out a deep breath, then looked down at his hands and walked into her bathroom to wash them. The space smelled of her hair product and the palm-sized soap bar that came with the room. He looked at his reflection in the mirror, not really sure what he expected to see. When he emerged a moment later, he found she hadn’t moved. 

“We could finally talk about it,” he hedged. 

“Talk about what?” Her face was pale and there was a tremor in her voice.

“Scully…” He stayed where he was, feeling rooted to the spot. “After what happened in my hallway, before Antarctica, I thought… I had no expectations, Scully, but… I know you feel this too.” He pressed his hand to his chest. 

“Don’t,” she said, looking like she wanted the floor to open up and swallow her whole. 

He thought of the snake tattoo on her back, of her body on the mattress. He fought off a fresh surge of lust.

“We never talked about Jerse. You got sick and… we never talked about him. Scully, we’ve got years of baggage and miles of silence between us.” Even from where he stood, he could see tears form in her eyes. “But, I -- Scully, you’re not the only one who has dreams -- fantasies,” he corrected, “like that.” She gave him a sharp look and he moved forward, kneeling down in front of her. “And it’s not some unconscious theta processing. There’s nothing unconscious about it.”

He let it sit there between them, two roads diverging in a wood. He felt guilt and longing in equal measure. He squeezed her hand and released it, the threadbare carpet hard under his knees.

“Mulder,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. A fat tear finally fell and slid down her cheek. 

The air between them was thick. There had been a time when he thought that love was a myth, but that was before she’d walked into his subterranean office and tilted his world on its axis. In a way, he knew Scully better than she knew herself. Her denials about the things they’d seen and witnessed didn’t hurt nearly as much as the denial about what they meant to each other. He felt a new surge of frustration, of anger, and something else too: fear. 

Scully was a Dreamer now. One person was dead and they still didn’t know what they were dealing with. He sagged at her feet. If she wouldn’t talk about the content of her dreams, he would at least force her to talk about the implications of it. 

“How did this happen?” he whispered. “How did you become a Dreamer?”

“I don’t know.”

“Could this be some kind of contagion?”

“I hesitate to speculate-” she started.

Mulder rolled to his feet, frustration surging back.

“You’d better  _ start _ speculating Scully! Not only do we have a dead body, but you’re now a part of this.” He was pacing the length of her room now, his voice loud in the quiet of the night.

“Why are you angry with me?” she asked him.

“I’m not angry with you!” It was a half-truth.

“Then what --”

“I’m scared!” he said, his voice cracking. He wilted. “Jesus, Scully, I’m scared to death.”

She looked at him a long moment, her aquiline nose lifted in dignified courage.

“You think I’ll hurt you,” she stated quietly. 

“Me,” he responded after a moment, “or your mom, your brothers. Scully, if you hurt  _ anyone _ , you'd never forgive yourself. I’m a lot less worried for me than I am for you.”

The truth of it was, he was likely in far more danger than she was, yet as she searched his eyes, he still couldn’t help but want to shoulder the burden for her. His anger ebbed away.

“Oh, Mulder,” she finally said, and the way she said it sent a shot of dopamine into his bloodstream. He sat down next to her on the bed, spent.

“I’m not saying I love my chances,” he mumbled, swaying his shoulder into hers. 

“We’d better make a pot of coffee,” she sighed, and then rose and headed for the small percolator. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

_ Best Western Motel _

_ Petoskey, Michigan _

_ July 3, 1999 _

_ 7:03am _

They spent a sleepless night holed up in Scully’s room, poring over everything they had. When Mulder’s cell phone rang once at around 7:00 a.m., they’d realized they hadn’t even noticed the sun come up. 

Hank had called Mulder and hung up after one ring. When they tried calling him back, he did not pick up. They each quickly showered, dressed, and made their way back to the Poquette’s homestead. 

There was a newly chopped cord of wood stacked between two cottonwoods, and the yard -- their first time seeing it in full daylight -- was sandy, sparsely covered with weeds. There was what looked like the leg of a deer, chewed off from the knee and still covered with hide, laying in a prickly patch of dandelion, the cloven black hoof pointed toward the house. The trees shivered briefly on a hot puff of wind and then were silent. 

The property gave Mulder the same uneasy feeling as when he was approached calmly by wildlife. A thrum in the gut that says  _ something’s not right here _ .

“Where’s the dog?” Scully asked, inclining her head toward the empty chain. The grass in the yard had been chewed up by the tires of the ambulance and police cruisers in the night.

They padded up the steps and peered into the screen door. The house was dark and quiet. Scully gave one sharp sniff. 

“I smell blood,” she said. 

They both reached for their service weapons at the same time, drawing them in sync. 

“Is a smell probable cause?” Mulder whispered with his hand on the door handle. 

“It’s good enough for me,” Scully whispered back.

Mulder nodded at her and swung open the door, the hinges creaking loudly in the quiet of the morning. 

The living room was dusty and silent when they crept into it, a single shaft of sunlight streaming through the window above the sink in the kitchen which illuminated a half-full bottle of Jim Beam sitting on the counter. Mulder took the lead and headed for Hank and Moira’s bedroom. He swung his gun through the open doorway and then lowered it, swearing under his breath. 

Hank Poquette was laid out sideways over the bed, half of his face gone, a shotgun lying awkwardly across his lap. 

XxXxXxXxXxX __

  
  


_ Harbor Springs, Michigan _

_ July 3, 1999 _

_ 11:08am _

Outside the tiny police department, across a mowed patch of grass was a fenced-in deer park no more than an acre in extremis. Mulder walked to the enclosure and peered in. A dozen black eyes followed him, not even warily, so used to humans as they were. Most were lazing in the shade, tongues darting out to run over glistening noses, hides shivering off the bite of insects. The males' antlers were bulbous, not sheared to a point like their wild brothers. 

Scully came up silently behind him. 

She’d done everything she could not to think of her dream. Not to think of what her subconscious seemed to want, to need from Mulder.  _ There’s nothing unconscious about it _ , he’d said. How right was he? Did she want to be taken? Claimed? The whole thing was mortifying in a hundred different ways. 

“Can you imagine living like this?” he said, not taking his eyes off the deer. 

“Like what?”

“Cooped up. Trapped.” 

She chuffed a silent laugh. She’d always thought his imagination was better than hers. Before. 

“I imagine they’ve been here since birth. They probably don’t know any better,” she said instead.

Mulder didn’t respond, but gave her a long look. The muscles of his jaw jumped beneath his skin. 

“No,” she finally said after a moment, “I can’t imagine it.”

Mulder was a peripatetic, an outrider. Like a nomad, he would wither and die if forced to stay in one place for too long. Though she was beginning to suspect that he was afield just searching for his heart. 

Feeling her own squeeze in her chest, she again thought of her dream and felt an uncomfortable bump of guilt.

“Our two main witnesses are gone, and we still don’t know what we’re dealing with,” he said, curling his fingers around the chain links of the fence. The ungulates before them blinked dumbly, nothing much behind their eyes but boredom.

“Well, we have a body, don’t we?” Scully said optimistically, realizing too late how casually indifferent she sounded. 

“We have two,” Mulder said, blowing out a frustrated breath. She knew how much he felt, how he hated losing people, how he’d looked at Moira the same way he looked at a picture of Samantha. The same way he was looking at her.

She put her hand on his back, felt the large muscles running under his skin ripple beneath her touch as he let go of the fence. 

“Moira wasn’t a Dreamer, but Hank was,” she said. “Maybe I’ll find something.”

He looked at her darkly and she knew what he was thinking; she was a Dreamer now, too. Would her body be next? Would his?

XxXxXxXxXxX

_ St. Francis Xavier Church _

_ Petoskey, Michigan _

_ 2:08pm _

The St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church was a red brick colossus, particularly considering the size of the town it served. The belfry and spire rose high above the two and three story buildings of the quaint downtown, reaching for the spirit in the sky that it purported to serve. 

Mulder walked quickly up the concrete steps that led to the narthex, through the main entrance and on into the nave. The ceiling of the chapel was soaring; vaulted arcades painted cream and robin’s egg blue. It was quiet, with no services being held, nor any worshippers that Mulder could see. 

He looked at his watch -- he had a few minutes until it was time to meet with the priest. He considered his partner for a moment; her faith, her loyalty, her trust. She’d put them into both the church and into him, and he at least, would not fail her. He felt the ghost of her touch, wondered if she felt the ghost of his. 

They were now at the point of human pair-bonding that having her by his side felt like a requisite. Moments when they weren’t together had that  _ where-are-my-glasses _ feeling, and Mulder would pat every pocket until he realized it was Scully he was looking for. 

“Agent Mulder?” said a voice at his elbow. He turned to find a priest looking up at him, the man’s hair a frothy mass of white -- not exactly unkempt, but desperately in need of a cut. He smoothed it back from his forehead self-consciously as he stepped forward and smiled. “Are you Agent Mulder?” he asked again. 

“I’m sorry, yes,” Mulder answered, and turned to the man in full. “I believe you spoke with my partner yesterday on the phone?” 

“About Sister Mary Alice, yes.” The man turned, “Come with me.” 

Mulder followed as the priest walked silently along the marble floor of the promenade and through a door behind the ambulatory. They passed through a small room that smelled sharply of incense and was cluttered with the gold-plated accoutrements of faith, then a left and on down another short hallway that led to a skinny wooden door. 

“My office,” the priest said, unlocking it. There was a plaque on the outside that read “Fr. Mulcahy”, and Mulder had to refrain from making a  _ MASH _ joke the man had probably heard a hundred times.

The door opened into a tiny room, the walls egg-shell white and unadorned except for a picture of the pope, which was hanging from a plain screw in the wall, the dark framing wire tilting the picture forward a bit, making it look as if the pontiff were watching their every move. 

Father Mulcahy moved behind a desk and gestured for Mulder to sit across from him in the only other chair in the room, which was covered in threadbare pink upholstery that probably used to be red; the seat more springs than cushion. Mulder shifted uncomfortably as he sat down. 

“I was told you and the Headmistress were close?” Mulder asked him once they were seated.

“As close as you could get to Sister Mary Alice,” the priest said. “The nuns of Holy Childhood were a rare breed.”

“I’m not Catholic myself, but I’ve heard tell,” Mulder said. 

Father Mulcahy smiled at him indulgently. “What did you want to know about her?”

“I’m not sure exactly what I’m looking for, Father, to be honest,” Mulder said. “But there are… inexplicable things happening to good people, and it’s my job to figure out what it is and stop it. And something -- my gut -- tells me it has to do with the Holy Childhood School.”

“Inexplicable things?” the priest asked. Mulder nodded. “Many people, when confronted with something that cannot be explained, would turn to the church,” Mulcahy went on. 

“In this case, Father,” Mulder said, “they called the FBI.”

“And what do you think of inexplicable things, Agent Mulder?” 

Mulder considered for several seconds. The moment felt like a test. Finally, he quoted the Bard: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Mulcahy narrowed his eyes at Mulder, and then after a moment of what seemed to be careful consideration, he bent over and unlocked a drawer in his desk. He pulled out several large leather-bound diaries and set them on the desk in front of Mulder. 

“You’ll want to read these,” the priest said. “The journals and diaries of the Headmistresses of the Holy Childhood Indian Boarding School. Sister Mary Alice’s is on the top. Some of these are nearly one hundred years old, and I was entrusted by Mary Alice herself to keep them. They cannot leave this room, but you may stay as long as you like to read them.”

At this, the priest rose from his chair and made his way to the door, turning as he was about to close it. 

“You say your gut is telling you the Indian school is involved,” Father Mulcahy said as Mulder reached out and pulled the first book into his hands. “Do you always trust your gut, Agent Mulder?”

“I do,” Mulder said, turning to look at the man. 

“Around here, we call that faith,” he said and closed the door behind him. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

_ Emmet County Morgue _

_ Northern Michigan Regional Hospital _

_ Petoskey, Michigan _

_ 5:45pm _

There was nothing to find in Hank Poquette’s body but buckshot. Barring lab results showing something she wasn’t expecting, Scully was no closer to an answer. 

“Suicide, then,” Dr. Farrugia sighed from across Hank’s body, as he pulled off his safety goggles. His lab coat was worn at the elbows, the material turned gauzy. Scully nodded mutely. “Were you hoping to find something else, Agent Scully?” She nodded again, exhaustion pulling at her. Her nerves were frazzled and raw.

Dr. Farrugia looked at her kindly and gestured for her to follow him. 

“Come into my office.”

She sat down wearily and rubbed at tired eyes. Her circadian rhythms were off -- cortisol was warring with insulin and testosterone. When she opened her eyes again, Dr. Farrugia was at her side, holding out a steaming mug. 

“Coffee?” she asked, reaching for it. The cup was thick in her hands, a pleasant chunk. 

“Tea,” he said with a smile. She wrapped her fingers gratefully around the hot ceramic. 

“Something tells me the police reports aren’t giving me the whole picture here,” he said, sitting down at his desk. The light blue scrubs he was wearing under his lab coat complimented his complexion, which was darker than Scully realized: the brushed olive hue of the Mediterranean. 

She shook her head. 

“Do you want to tell me about it?” he asked her. 

So she told him everything that had happened up until they had wheeled Hank Poquette’s gurney into the morgue. The only thing she left out was the fact that it appeared she too had become a Dreamer. The ME had sat silently, patiently, his fingers gently laced in his lap.

“My partner thinks,” she began tentatively, “that Moira Poquette and these other people are being physically sucked into the dreams of those afflicted.”

“Do you concur?” he asked, calm and inquisitive. “What have the bodies we looked at told you?” Scully was pleasantly surprised by his open-mindedness.

“The science tracks,” she said, then chuffed a mirthless laugh, “insofar as it can.”

“Hank Poquette didn’t leave a suicide note?” he asked curiously.

“No,” Scully said, “but he believed his dreams were responsible for Moira’s death.”

Dr. Farrugia nodded and pulled off his glasses, thoughtfully wiping them with a cloth. 

“I had a case, back in ‘72,” he began, looking at the wall rather than Scully, “I’d only been on the job a couple of years at that point. We don’t get a lot of crime up here, you understand, so the grisly ones stick in my head. This was a double suicide. Young couple. Just engaged. Had their whole lives ahead of them, everything going for them. No one could figure out why they did it.”

Scully waited patiently, silently.

“They left a note, Dr. Scully. Saying that they ‘didn’t want to hurt each other in their dreams.’”

Scully sat up straight.

“Those were the exact words in the note?” she asked. 

“I remember it clear as day. There was a lot of conjecture at the time about drug use, etc. it didn’t make any sense. These were high school sweethearts. Well-loved kids.”

“Do you happen to have the reports on the case?” Scully asked, adrenaline coursing through her. 

“Of course,” he said, turning to the filing cabinet behind him, “I’ve kept a copy of every case I’ve ever worked.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

_ St. Francis, Xavier Church _

_ Petoskey, Michigan _

_ 6:15pm _

The words were swimming in front of Mulder’s eyes. The journals of the headmistresses were mostly the daily ramblings of bored women. Thoughts on God, complaints about the school’s administration, occasional grievances about fellow nuns or pupils. He’d started with journals in the mid-50s hoping to find something on the Franklin Donaughy case (no luck there) and read forward in time.

It wasn’t until he’d reached midway through Sister Mary Alice’s journal, dated September 1969, that he read something that made him sit up a bit in his uncomfortable chair. 

“ _ A Blackbird landed at my school today. I had been warned by my Older Sisters about them _ ,” the journal read. “ _ Mary is a sweet child, but I fear she is like the other Blackbirds before her. There is a storm inside this one, and it cannot be prayed or beaten out of her, though we have tried. Why the Lord decides to bestow a power like this onto an Indian, I have long wondered and prayed about. I have looked through the writings of my Older Sisters for guidance, which has come to naught. Perhaps we should turn her out to the woods, and let the Lord sort her out as he did the first Blackbird all those years ago _ .”

Adrenalized, he skimmed through diary after diary, finally hitting paydirt in those of Sister Mary Louise, written in 1915. Mary Louise was a no-nonsense writer, sticking with the facts of the day. He found what he was looking for:

“ _ Eleanor Blackbird disappeared from school grounds on the afternoon of May 6. Her body was found in the branches of a white pine tree in the forest to the west of the school on the morning of May 7. The Authorities say she died of Exposure, though I have my doubts. Nevertheless, her Troubles are now Ended, as are ours with her -- may her Unnatural Power return to God. _ ”

XxXxXxXxXxX

_ Emmet County Morgue _

_ Northern Michigan Regional Hospital _

_ Petoskey, Michigan _

_ 6:24pm _

Mulder called her, breathless. 

“Scully, I have something,” he said, and she perked up, despite her exhaustion.

“So do I,” she said, pulling the sleeve of her coat up and then finger-combing her hair.

She heard the rustling of Mulder’s own clothes through the cellular hiss. 

“Are you at the morgue?” he asked. 

“Yes.”

“I’m going to come pick you up. Let’s get something to eat -- have you eaten? -- I haven’t eaten all day.”

He was there five minutes later, and they stopped at the first restaurant they saw -- a not-quite-dive-bar advertising ‘World Famous Olive Burgers.’ They each ordered one. 

“So what have you got?” Mulder asked as he shook a packet of sweetener into his iced tea. 

She almost said ‘you first,’ but enthusiasm won out over curiosity. She was relieved to be discussing the case, rather than what had happened the night before. 

“The ME I’ve been working with,” she said, reaching into her briefcase to hand over photocopies of Dr. Farrugia’s files, “had a case in the early 70s. Double suicide. Young local couple by the names of Kate Larchmont and George Mayer. Now, there’s no tie that we know of to the Holy Childhood woods or the school itself, but they left a note behind.” She pointed to the file Mulder was holding. 

“‘We don’t want to kill each other in our dreams,’” Mulder read aloud, sitting up straight. “Holy shit, Scully.”

“Yeah,” she said. 

The waitress came then with their burgers -- half-pound behemoths dripping with grease and swiss cheese perched on the softest looking brioche buns Scully had ever seen. They both dove in immediately. 

“So,” Mulder said with his mouth full, still chewing his first bite of burger. He wiped his fingers on a stiff paper napkin and reached into his jacket. “I have something to show you, too.” 

He handed over two pages filled with his own writing, then took another bite. 

“The priest at the church who was cozy with the last Headmistress let me take a look at the personal journals of the Headmistresses of the school going back almost to its inception. He wouldn’t let them leave the church, but I copied out the relevant bits.”

Scully flattened the pages on the tabletop next to her, took another bite and kept reading. She pointed to the top one.

“So these are from…” she started, and let Mulder fill in the blanks. 

“...The last Headmistress of the school, Sister Mary Alice. This one is dated September of 1969.” As Scully read through Mulder’s transcription, he continued talking. “She talks about a ‘Blackbird’ landing at the school, and then goes on to reference a power this child -- this Mary -- had, and her attempts at looking to her ‘Older Sisters’ for guidance on how to address it. I figured the term ‘Older Sisters’ probably meant former Headmistresses, so I looked through the older journals. She also says ‘ _ Perhaps we should turn her out to the woods, and let the Lord sort her out as he did the first Blackbird all those years ago.’  _ And that’s when I found this.” He pointed to the second translation. “From 1915.”

Scully read, and turned to Mulder, distracted a bit by her dripping burger, reading the last bit aloud: “ _ Nevertheless, her Troubles are now Ended, as are ours with her -- may her Unnatural Power return to God.”  _ She set down the paper and looked to Mulder. “Her ‘unnatural power?’ What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” Mulder said, “But that’s the second reference to a ‘Blackbird’ having some kind of power, and this girl, this Eleanor, died  _ in those woods _ .”

Scully sat back in her chair. She had somehow finished the entire burger. 

“None of these writings reference dreams, Mulder,” she sighed. Her stomach churned and she began to regret not ordering her usual salad. 

“I think the dreams are tied to the ‘powers’ in these girls, Scully,” he said, “and I think you were right from the beginning. The answer is in that forest.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

_ L'Arbre Croche Commons Construction Site _

_ Harbor Springs, Michigan _

_ July 3, 1999 _

_ 11:12pm  _

The tourmaline sky looked oval, like it was pushing in from the sides. The firmament awash in stars, the vittate Milky Way a brush stroke of purple above them. Their flashlights killed the effect somewhat, but other than the pinprick stars, the trees around them were all blackness. 

At Mulder’s insistence, they started from the husk of the school and made their way into the woods, not quite sure what they were looking for. 

“Let’s head for the lunch site,” said Mulder, and Scully heaved a long-suffering sigh from beside him, but trudged on. 

“I still say we should have waited until the morning,” she said, exhaustion dragging on her. 

“Yeah, well, I may not have lasted the night,” Mulder said without malice.

She stayed silent after that. 

The trucks and equipment looked like slumbering beasts in the dark of the forest, and they could hear creatures shuffling off around them; Mulder had to fight the urge to pull his gun. 

He had to remind himself that though the Northwoods was a wild place, it had been tamed into submission by long-ago bounties on its apex predators; wolves and cougar all but gone from the lower peninsula. There were still vast tracts of land, virginal in the sense that humans hadn’t yet despoiled them, but the ecosystem was limping along with too many deer and elk. There was a barely perceptible imbalance here, Mulder thought: a slight tilt of the axis. A wild that had been tempered and was the poorer for it. A place that had no business feeling safe, but did. Except maybe when he was trudging through it in the middle of the night, tired as a hypersomniac and jumpy as a squirrel. It was probably just raccoons snapping branches and ambling off as he and Scully approached, but Mulder swung his flashlight at every sound anyway. 

It was in one of those flashlight sweeps that he saw it. 

He kept the beam of light steady and approached, stumbling when his foot caught a root. He flung out his free hand and made contact with the tree he was illuminating, then pushed himself back upright, the bark rough under his fingers. There, just above his head in the cone of the light, was the heart with the initials he’d pointed out to Scully when they’d been out here with Hank Poquette.  _ K L + G M _

He jumped back. Kate Larchmont and George Mayer.  _ The tree _ . He shone his light up the bark and saw that it was coniferous -- a white pine. It must be the tree that Eleanor had died in, he was certain of it. __

XxXxXxXxXxX

“Scully!” Mulder hissed, and she startled. 

“What is it?” she asked urgently, taking a few steps toward him, “Did you find something?”

“This tree,” he said, his voice sounding half choked, “the one the construction workers sat under for lunch that day. Did you ever touch it?”

She thought back to her day in the woods with Hank, with Officer Polaski. She thought of the tacky sap in between her fingers.

“Yes,” she said. 

Mulder made a strangled sound, and the leaves in the canopy shivered on a gust of wind.

“It’s the tree, Scully,” he said, “the  _ tree _ is making the Dreamers.”

“What?!” 

“Look,” he said and swung his flashlight up to the heart carving.

“This tree, Scully,” he urged, “is the one that some of the construction workers sat against to eat. It’s gotta be the same one Eleanor Blackbird died in. This tree has the initials of Kate Larchmont and George Mayer carved into it.”

She felt as empty as a fishing net, the water sieved out by gravity. 

“You touched it, Scully,” he said, looking down at his hand “and so did I.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

_ Best Western Motel  _

_ Petoskey, Michigan _

_ July 4th, 1999 _

They had pushed past their second wind and on into their third. Neither slept. They sat on Mulder’s bed all night and watched Nick-at-Night too loud, prodding each other if it looked like the other was nodding off. He showered in the morning with the water turned low, the cold slap doing little to revive frayed nerves. 

Mulder felt alternate waves of nausea and hilarity; punch-drunk with the fist of exhaustion. There was only so much caffeine one could safely consume, which Scully rather nastily reminded him. 

Barring a more well-thought-out course of action, they decided to spend the day driving to Gaylord and back, hounding the Diocese there for school records. Mulder had nearly swerved off the road twice, at which point they both admitted that they probably shouldn't be out here in their state -- neither had slept in nearly 72 hours. 

Nevertheless, their excursion produced fruit, though not quite bountiful, and certainly not ripe: they had received incomplete school records, but had lucked into receiving a student list from 1969, the year they were most interested in. 

There were Independence Day revellers everywhere, and traffic, so much as it could be in a small town, was terrible. Streets had been closed for parades and they had to wait at a corner while the local high school marching band drilled crisply by. The air smelled of sunscreen and the burnt charcoal-sulfur of sparklers. The lake looked a cool treat.

They made it back to their hotel in the late afternoon and collapsed onto Scully’s bed, handing sheaves of paper back and forth, looking for a ‘Mary Blackbird.’ If they could find her, she would be the one person -- perhaps still alive -- that could tie all their leads together. 

“God, Scully,” Mulder said, laying on his back, holding the papers above his head, “half the girls at the school are named Mary.”

Scully gave him a pinched look. 

“Melissa and I were both near misses,” she said, “had Charlie been born a girl, you’d better believe he would have been a Mary.” 

Mulder made a face.

Suddenly, Scully sat up straight. 

“Here,” she said, shoving the page in his direction. “Mary Lou Blackbird, kindergarten admission form.”

Mulder sat up as well, the papers on his lap drifting to the floor. 

“I don’t suppose the address is still good?” he asked. 

One phone call proved it was not. And there was no Mary Blackbird in the local directory nor in a Federal or State database. 

Their excitement waned, and when Mulder stood up to use the bathroom, he was so lightheaded he had to put a hand back on the bed so he wouldn’t fall over. It was getting dark outside and he could hear fireworks in the distance. For a moment he thought it was gunfire. 

“Mulder,” Scully said, looking at him seriously, “dreams or not, we have to sleep.”

“Scully --” he started to protest, but she interrupted him. 

“No,” she insisted. “Do you know what happens to a body consistently denied sleep? Cognitive impairments, delusions, even psychosis. If we want to solve this case, we need to be at our best. We need rest, Mulder.”

“But what if --” he started again. Again she interrupted him. 

“Don’t,” she said, “don’t think about it. Heightened anxiety can lead to anxiety-laden dreams. And… the _ tamer _ our dreams, the better.”

He pulled at his tie. 

“Don’t worry Scully,” he said, “my anxiety dreams nearly always present themselves as my running late for an exam in a college course I never attended. You and your virtue are fine.”

“It’s not my virtue I’m worried about, Mulder.”

She looked as fragile as a teacup rattling in a saucer.

“How much sleep do we need to get to function?” he asked. 

“Five hours,” she said, “though in our current state nine to twelve would be better.”

“Five,” he repeated. “I’ll set my alarm. You do it, too. We start fresh in the morning.” She nodded at him solemnly. “Do you… should we... “ he hedged, hesitant to part from her. “Try sleeping in shifts? One of us could wake the other when they start to dream? Dreams happen during REM, right? We’d be able to see that.”

“I think that’s a non-starter,” she said, “dreams can take place at any stage of sleep, not just REM.” Her red-rimmed eyes blinked at him slowly. 

“Would you like me to stay here tonight?” he offered. 

She looked punchy, her lips threatening a smile. “All things considered… I think it’s best if we stay in our own rooms.”

“Okay,” he agreed, rising slowly to his feet. Walking to the door felt like slogging through sand.

“Sweet dreams,” she said flatly as he closed the door behind him. 

Outside he could hear the pop and boom of fireworks in the distance as he walked back to his room. It sounded muffled and cryptic. It sounded like the end of the world. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

Her eyes were burning with exhaustion. Three nights of being afraid to fall asleep, afraid of what her subconscious might do to her friends and family. Of what she might do to Mulder, or Mulder to her. Reluctantly she changed into the silk pajamas she had packed and brushed her teeth slowly, drawing out each of her evening ablutions as long as she possibly could. 

The second she fell into bed she knew she would fall asleep. Drawing back the sheet on the bed, she noticed the maid had tucked the edges in extra tight. 

Moments later, she thought nothing. 

  
  



	4. Chapter 4

_...Will the wind ever remember?_

_The names it has blown in the past_

_And with its crutch, its old age and its wisdom_

_It whispers "no, this will be the last"_

_And the wind cries Mary_

_\--‘The Wind Cries Mary’ by Jimi Hendrix_

  
  


_Best Western Motel_

_Petoskey, Michigan_

_July 4, 1999_

_10:37pm_

_There were gunshots popping all over and around him, each one startling him as if he were a child, not a seasoned FBI Agent. He was on a crowded stretch of sand on the Vineyard, every face he passed neither enemy nor friend; just a nameless, faceless mass. Scully was a diaphanous presence at the far end of the beach that he couldn’t get to no matter how far he ran. It was the beach of his youth, the one where they filmed_ Jaws _the year after Samantha was taken. Guns were blazing, people were milling, and he -- Could. Not. Get. To. Scully._

_She was facing the other direction, toes in the sand, looking out to sea -- her father was in the Atlantic after all -- and all he could see was the back of her hair; an autumn mosaic in the blazing summer light._

_A sound from the changing tents to his right and there stood Linda Bowman, her face half in shadow though the sun was noontime full. She raised her arm, a gun in her hand and CRACK! Scully fell, a flower of blood blossoming across her back and--_

He came awake with a shout, adrenaline sizzling through his veins. The starchy motel sheets were wrapped around his ankles and, snakelike, coiled harder around him when he struggled to kick them off. Finally freeing himself, he stumbled out of bed and through the door without a thought to his state of undress -- a pair of boxers sticking to his fevered skin. 

_The tree, the tree, the tree_ . He thought of Moira Poquette lying dead on a stretcher, of the initials carved into the pine; the lovers with their note ‘we don’t want to kill each other in our dreams.’ _Scully_. 

He scrambled down the sidewalk toward her room at the far end of the complex, the concrete damp and cold beneath the wet slap of his bare feet, his heart hammering so loud in his chest that all he could hear was the blood roaring through his veins. 

He careened around the corner and was reaching for her door when it flew open and Scully, propping herself against the doorframe limply, her eyes round and terrified, stumbled toward him. 

“Mulder,” she hissed his name weakly, “Mulder.”

She all but collapsed in his arms.

XxXxXxXxXxX 

_She stumbled through the dark night, through mesquite and bracken, which turned into snow at a demarcated line. She stopped. On the snow stood a red fox. On the red dirt hematite stood an arctic fox. They faced each other, a yin yang in the night, their pelts thick and downy, staring each other down._

_Without warning, the red fox launched at the arctic fox, going straight for the neck. He bit down fiercely and the arctic fox went limp, blood dripping down over his white fur, staining the snow beneath them. Scully tried to shout, but no sound came forth. She felt a tap on the shoulder._

_When she turned, Mulder stood there, bare chested, blood dripping from his mouth._

_Finally, she was able to speak._

_“Mulder, are you hurt?” she asked him._

_“I’ve eaten,” he said, his voice sounding off. And then he clutched at his stomach, his face a mask of pain._

_“Mulder!”_

_He fell to the earth, writhing._

_“Poison,” he whimpered._

_She fell to her knees, clutching at him, and he went limp. She scrambled, trying to feel for a pulse. She could find none._

_“Mulder,” she choked, and he started crumbling before her eyes, turning to dust and tawny hair that she tried to pull toward herself, trying to hold onto any part of him she could. Then a cold gust of wind came and blew him completely away._

She came awake with a gasp, her arms still in dreamland, trying to pull the covers of the bed into an embrace, but they would not move, so tightly tucked into the bed as they were. She rolled out, fell onto her knees and, still gasping, lunged for the door. 

When she opened it, there Mulder stood. She fell into him, her relief at seeing him alive and whole so acute that she briefly went limp in his arms.

“Scully?!” his voice rasped, raw and terrified. 

She leaned back to look at his face, one last glance to make sure he was real and he grabbed her by the shoulders and raked his eyes up and down her pajama-clad body, spinning her around briefly to take a look at her back.

“You… you’re not hurt?” he said.

She launched herself back into his arms, practically clawing at his shoulders. 

“Mulder, I dreamed you were dead,” she said into his neck, “I thought I’d killed you.”

He held her to him fiercely. 

“I did too,” he rumbled, “I -- I dreamed Linda Bowman shot you.”

The torment in his voice broke something inside of her. Everything but the warmth where their bodies pressed together fell away. She didn’t hear the crickets in the scrub cedar outside her door, she didn’t feel the cold creep of wet concrete under her bare feet. It was her and it was Mulder and they were both alive and whole. 

She pulled back just enough to maneuver her face in front of his and then leaned in and pressed her lips to the cushy softness of Mulder’s own. Mulder, noble Mulder, who had held her child in his arms, who had wept at her bedside, who would unleash a violence like God’s own fury on anyone who hurt her. It had only ever been, could only ever be him. 

He did not reciprocate at first, but there was no sweep of humiliation, no pulling back in mortification -- he’d all but told her that it could only ever be her, too. She’d startled him, she knew, but it only took him a moment to recover. He sucked in a breath through his generous nose and then reciprocated with enthusiasm, his lush, pliant mouth opening above hers, impatient and wanting -- as if he wanted to swallow her whole. She felt a strength bigger than herself, like the mother who had lifted a Honda to save her child, as it occurred to her that there was nothing she wanted more; she wanted to be taken, possessed. She wanted to be consumed by him, to leave her skin and crawl inside of him and find a place that was dark and warm. 

There was a need that arced between them, elemental and ferocious. He was wearing next to nothing and she could feel the hot steel of him grow against her tender torso. She thrilled in it -- a stark moment of clarity -- never more certain of anything in her life than of sealing their fate with the ultimate divine act. 

The evening was temperate and quiet around them, the night smelling of hot asphalt and cedar. The light above her motel room door buzzed; barnstormed by ten different insects. A door slammed around the corner. A teenager fed a crumpled dollar into an uncooperative soft drink machine nearby, slapping her palm into the mechanism in frustration. The agents noticed none of this; swept up in the moment, barely dressed and clinging to each other on the threshold of a not-quite shabby lodging in the upper midwest. 

Pushing her backward into the room, he managed to kick the door closed without breaking contact. And then he was all hands and teeth, his fingertips leaving trails of fire on her skin. 

He smelled of toothpaste and musk and desperate fear-sweat, the slippery mink of his hair clutched in her hands. When she tried to pull away to wrench off her top, he grasped her more tightly to him, lifting her off the ground briefly by the ass to gain better access to her mouth.

His hands seemed so big and her body so small, the dichotomy of their sexes doing nothing but getting her het up to the point of frenzy. She thought of the Mulder in her dream, taking her roughly from behind, possessive and coarse.

She felt dizzy and dazed, the viscera between her hip bones a muzzy, liquid ache. Her mons throbbed, the seep of desire creeping through her seam, gluing her panties to the juncture of her thigh. 

He maneuvered them to the bed and when she reached between them, she brushed the head of his cock with her thumb, and he moaned once; a sharp, involuntary sound that skittered along her nerves.

“God,” he panted, and then his mouth was back assaulting hers as he folded himself over her on the bed, his heft pressing her deeply into the mattress. In one quick move, he had her bottoms and panties peeled off, his long arm dropping them to the floor. Scully let out a gasp as his hands ran up under her top -- finally -- to her breasts. Her nipples were pebbled and tight, anticipating his touch, the silk fabric of her pajamas a light feather wisp over the back of his palm.

Nudging her legs apart with his knee, she opened to him like a crocus, and then, like a hummingbird drawn to nectar, his attention shifted south. He took his hand from her body and sat back to look at her, visually drinking his fill. She felt both a pendulous lethargy and a euphoric lightness under his scrupulous gaze, her sex a feather that could sink a ship.

He rubbed a hand over his face, the rasp of his jaw the only sound in the room. 

“Do you want this, Scully?” he asked, and she would have laughed if she’d been less turned on, less in love with the conundrum of a man set before her -- and that’s what she was, what she had been for some time -- absolutely base over apex beyond thought or reason. 

In answer, she wrapped one leg around his side and back, and pulled him toward her. He smiled at her sweetly and lowered himself with purpose, the smile only dying when his lips met hers. 

Not even a year ago, in Africa, the roads that led to the camp where she had stayed were only designated as such in that trucks and SUVs sometimes drove along them. She had thought of Mulder as she bumped along it, seeing things he would have pointed out to her if he’d been there: small fences bordering the road made out of live cacti, a Samburu boy leading a goat on a rope along its edge. The Atlantic had roared beside her there the same as it did off the Chesapeake, but Mulder had been on the other side of it, and his mind -- gone fractal -- had been somewhere else, still. 

Here, she held his head in her hands, nothing between them but an ocean of desperate, long-denied desire. She pressed her fingers along his squamous suture and kissed him as hard as she could. 

XxXxXxXxXxX 

He was seething with furious relief and a sexual need so overpowering he felt almost faint. 

The floodgates were opened and all that was impermissible was suddenly allowed and he could not decide what to touch or taste first. Scully’s was a body fit for worship and his instinct was to span her rib cage with the width of his hands and hold her as if in prayer; her skin a pillow-book devotional he could only read with fingertips.

This was a woman who felt everything -- empathy and responsibility and regret. She fought everything as well; injustices big and small, aging, the patriarchy. She fought herself sometimes too -- the way she looked at him, the way he looked at her. Scully fought the world and the world fought back. But the world was what he wanted to give her. It was what she was owed. He would settle this debt of gratitude to her, one kiss at a time in payment.

Half naked on her back before him, she watched as he unbuttoned her top one button at a time, revealing the taut skin of her torso, her round, perfect breasts, the gull wings of her clavicle. She was breathing hard and he could see the thrum of her pulse under the paper thin skin of her neck. 

“Mulder,” she panted, and he kicked off his boxers.

Briefly, he thought of prophylactics, of her eggs in cold storage, of Emily.

“Mulder _please_ ,” she begged, and his own body strummed a pulsing rhythm: _nownownow_. 

He lined up their sexes with one hand, and cradled her face with the other, wanting to watch her as they closed this circuit between them, grounding seven years of arcing electricity. She pulled his thumb into her mouth with her tongue, sucked it, and he was gone. 

He sunk into her with blazing euphoria, his thumb hooked in her cheek, her teeth gnashing his knuckle once, hard. 

He thought of her dream, of her tight little ass in the air, of the tattoo on her back; mouth to tail, beginning to end, a reminder that she could make her own dangerous choices, too. 

He had long speculated about the passion that Scully kept concealed beneath pencil skirts and a sculpted bob -- but the reality was nearly his undoing. He pulled his thumb from her wet mouth and stroked it roughly across a nipple. She hissed like a snake and pulled a knee up to her chin, nipped at him -- her teeth flat against the skin of his shoulder. She’d shot him there, once.

Burying himself slowly to the hilt, he was sheathed in her liquid heat. God, but she was perfect. How many years he’d wasted chasing lanky brunettes, legs-to-her-neck-type Lyssa’s, when Scully was out there in the world.

One arm hooked under her knee, he raised her leg over his shoulder and bit her gently on the ankle, finding a rhythm with her pulse. Her pupils were so big her aqua eyes went dark. She held his gaze steady, grounded him in the moment: was the mortar that held him together. She always had been.

Her breath caught as he shifted his hips, and so he shifted them again, finding her spongy G-spot with a victorious, sharp snap of his hips. She groaned breathily beneath him, her eyelids fluttering shut, and he gave her a moment before reaching out and catching her chin in the vee of his hand, forcing her eyes back to his. 

“I need you to see,” he said, harkening back to what her dream-Mulder had said, his lust unchecked, his intent clear.

But here… here he wanted her to see the tenderness in his eyes: that this wasn’t about possession to him, but about devotion, about their partnership above all else. He wanted her to hear the rhythmic slap of their coupling and know that _this_ was partnership, too. 

God, _Scully_.

If he thought too much about how wet she was, he’d combust; this thing he’d dreamt about, put on a hill, would be over and he would have barely gotten to enjoy it. Instead he focused on the sharp edge of her canines, the burn of cheap motel sheets under his knees, the industrial thunk and whine of the aged A/C unit. 

He thumbed the pink edge of a new scar on her torso -- the wake of Ritter’s bullet -- and thought that if Scully really was immortal he needed to become so, too.

She sat up, propping herself up to kiss him, and then kept driving until he fell on his back, her slick heat bearing down on him a second later, her push like gravity.

She ground her hips down on him until their pubic bones were touching, until he couldn’t possibly get any deeper inside of her, and still she pushed. He groaned with pleasure, with completion, with the base knowledge of her. He knew her from the inside now; he would never go back. She was a map he’d just learned how to read.

He could feel the muscles of her thighs start to quiver, her body clutch around him, could hear the catch of her breath. She was close. 

She pinned his arms above his head, rode him like she was chasing her release, and he didn’t want her to go, not yet.

“Scully,” he said, trying to slow her down. “Hey.”

She kissed him and shut him up, blasphemy on her lips. His resolve crumbled and he grabbed her by the hips, surging up into her hot core with force, bumping her cervix until she cried out, their bodies reaching flashpoint at the same time. Her orgasm seemed to go on and on until his sensitive cock could take no more and he slipped out of her and dropped his head into the curve of her shoulder, spent.

“Jesus,” she finally said, still panting, her breath a humid wash over his forehead.

“Yeah.”

He threaded his fingers through her vulpine hair and along the sclerous curve of her skull. Their love felt older than Skara Brae and he’d only known her seven years. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

She cleaned up and slipped back into bed where he was waiting for her, covers pulled up in welcome. She settled into his side, breathed the musky, post-coital smell of him. She felt halting and somewhat changed, still exhausted, momentarily a little worried she was living in her dream.

“Do I get to call you Fox now?” she asked, her voice rough.

“Only during sex.” She could hear the smile in his voice. She lay a hand on his chest. Even after what they’d just done, she felt tentative and uncertain with him, in awe at the enormity of it. 

“Mulder, what are we going to do?” She asked, worried. She meant everything. They were both afflicted by whatever this dream phenomenon was. They needed to get to the bottom of it -- they needed to get out alive.

He sighed and reached out to run a hand down her cheek. The A/C unit clicked off in the window and a car door slammed in the parking lot. She heard laughter decrescendo until it was closed up into another motel room; life going on without them.

“We’ll figure it out,” he said, “we always do.”

“Why didn’t it kill us?” she asked flatly, not wanting to relive the moment when she’d woken up, convinced that she’d killed him. 

“I don’t know,” he said, brushing his thumb along her jawline, “Maybe… maybe two Dreamers cancel each other out. Maybe the power repels itself.”

“What about the couple from the 70s?”

She felt Mulder shrug under her as she worked one of his chest hairs under the nail of her ring finger.

“Maybe they didn’t know. Maybe only one of them touched the tree. I can't claim to understand how the magic works.” He sighed into her hair and she felt her scalp warm under his humid breath.

“Is that what this is?” she asked, “Magic?”

“It certainly feels like it,” he said significantly. 

She felt tears burn her eyes, unbidden, as though she were held together with paper, all the connections in her life as delicately linked as the fragile lace of a fallen birch leaf. One puff of wind and it would all be blown away.

“Hey,” he said gently, pulling her head toward his and pressing a soft kiss to her temple, “Hey.”

A tear slipped down her face and onto the skin of his chest. She pressed a finger into it, anointing him. 

“Sleep,” he said, and she laughed, the sound tenebrous in the dark. He gave a chuff of mirthless laughter as well. “Sleep,” he said again, “we’ll tackle this in the morning.”

XxXxXxXxXxX 

_July 5th, 1999_

_9:34am_

The sun was blazing by the time they woke. Alive. They did not remember their dreams. 

They skated around each other in the small room, wearing shy smiles. It was a weighty thing they’d done, but Mulder felt lighter than air. 

After showering, Scully had fetched some clothes for Mulder from his room, while he showered himself. He was buttoning up his shirt as Scully made the bed, and he watched her tuck the corners with military precision.

There was a knock on the door and she pulled up and smoothed the bedspread before heading to answer it. Scully cracked it and took a step back. 

“Mrs. Naganashe?” she said, and Mulder came up behind her to peer through the doorway.

It was the woman who had answered the door at Leonard Naganashe’s house. In the sun, she stood tall despite her short stature, her skin a caramel brown, her hair, which ran loose down her back, was black as a raven’s wing, a shining obsidian in the morning light. 

“My name is Mary Blackbird,” said the woman standing at their threshold, “and I think I know why you’re here.” 

Scully shot him a glance, eyes wide, and he gave her an almost indiscernible nod. 

“Come in.” Scully ushered her inside.

There was a restive energy about the woman, a kinetic feeling as if all the neutrons in the room were vibrating at a frequency only she was attuned to.

“How did you find us?” Scully asked.

“Argyle called me,” she said, but didn’t elaborate. 

“We’ve been looking for you,” Mulder said, trying to gauge her reaction. 

“You’re not here about the school,” she said, it was a statement rather than a revelation. 

“In a way, we are,” Mulder said. 

Mary got a suspicious look about her.

“Tell us about the magic, Mary,” Mulder said, taking a chance, and he felt Scully shift next to him.

Mary narrowed her eyes at them both.

“ _You_ tell _me_ about the magic,” she said, “I can feel it on you.”

At this she raised her hand, lightly touching Scully’s sleeve, and gave her a static shock. Scully pulled her arm back as if burned. 

“Why are you here?” Mulder queried, stepping forward. 

“I can feel something spreading. I don’t know what it is. _I_ thought _I_ was the last Blackbird.”

“The last Blackbird?”

“My family. Some of us are born with gifts.”

“Powers?” Mulder asked. 

“If that’s what you want to call it. There _must_ be another, though,” she said, reaching out and brushing light sparks along Mulder’s sleeve. He felt as though perhaps she was showing off. “Another Blackbird.”

He exchanged a look with Scully.

“Take me to who did this to you,” Mary said again, a desperate edge creeping into her voice. Mulder looked at the woman in confusion. “I need someone to teach me,” she pleaded.

Mulder was confused. Wasn’t she the one here with powers?

“We were hoping you could help _us_ ,” he said, more baffled than ever. 

“Help you?! I’m lucky to have survived past adolescence!” Mary was suddenly all rage. “In the past, family would help us explore and hone our gifts. Our aunts would show us how to control it. Our grandmothers would teach us the words to harness them. I have no one left! No Indian I know speaks the language anymore. We don’t know our history or our customs.” She threw up her hands and the light through the window grew perceptively darker. “ _You_ , a colonizer, stands there and asks for _my_ help? I have nothing left to give. Tell me the Blackbird that did this to you. Take me to her. _Please_.”

“I don’t know if that’s possible--,” Scully started.

Mary all but growled.

“Mary-“ Mulder interjected, hoping to calm her.

“No! You gave us Christian names and white clothes and whiskey. You took our land, you took our language. You took our _children_. By the time I got back from the school there wasn’t a Blackbird left to teach me about my magic. I have power I can’t control. And I don’t even know the word for it.” With that, she shoved past Mulder and out the door, both agents on her heels. 

In the parking lot, Mary whirled on them. The sky above her grew dark and thunder rumbled low in the distance. There was a danger in the air. 

“If you won’t help me, I’ll find her myself,” Mary hissed. 

“It wasn’t a person who did this to us,” Mulder finally said. Mary pulled up short. “It was a tree,” he told her, realizing how lame it sounded as soon as the words left his lips. 

“A… what?”

“There’s a tree in the forest by the school,” Mulder tried to explain, “if you touch it, it-“

“Tell me,” Mary said, for once sounding interested rather than angry. 

“It makes dreams come true,” Scully said darkly, surprising both Mulder and Mary. 

“You mean--” Mary said. 

“Yes,” said Scully, “The dreams you dream at _night_.”

Mary visibly paled. 

“In 1915,” Mulder jumped in, “a student at Holy Childhood named Eleanor Blackbird died in that tree. There’s been a history ever since, with people who’ve come into contact with it. The people -- and their loved ones -- generally meet a bad end. Agent Scully and myself have touched it. And there are others.”

“Jesus,” said Mary, revealing the Catholic tradition that had forcibly shaped her.

“Do you think you can help us stop it?” Mulder asked her outright. 

The sky above them cleared suddenly, like the wind of the stratosphere had sucked the weather away. Mary looked defeated and melancholy. 

“I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” she said. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

_L’Arbre Croche Commons Construction Site_

_Harbor Springs, Michigan_

_11:29am_

Mulder stepped out of the rental car and onto the soft dirt of the construction site. The day was sunny and still, humidity thick in air that was suffused with the high drone of insects and birdsong. 

Scully opened the passenger door after giving him a quick look, the sun slanting in through the window and turning her hair vermilion in the dappled light. He could still feel the ghost of the strands running through his fingers. The clunk of Mary’s door closing pulled him out of his reverie.

“It’s this way,” Mulder started to say, but Mary held up a hand. 

“I can feel it,” she said. 

Scully shot him a look, but turned on her heel and followed Mary as she made her way toward the white pine. 

“The power in it is loose,” she went on, “it feels the same way in me.”

Mulder jogged to catch up to her and began walking by her side. 

“Loose, how?” Mulder probed, struggling to interpret what she was trying to say.

“Uncontrolled,” Mary answered with a grimace, “like it’s anchored but…” she stopped and looked up at him. “Picture a fire hose at full power, but all the firemen have let go. That’s what it feels like, here,” she pointed to the center of her chest.

“You can’t control it?” he asked. 

“There’s no one left to teach me how,” she said sadly, and began walking again, leaving him rooted to the spot. 

Scully came up and grabbed his hand, her grip tight, and they began following Mary as she made her way purposefully toward the tree. The forest took on a quiet so gradual that Mulder didn’t realize it until there was no sound at all -- Scully seemed to come to the same realization at the same time and pulled up short. 

“Mul-” she began. 

“They’re listening,” Mary stated simply from a few paces in front of them, leaving Mulder to infer that she was talking about the creatures of the forest. Scully, still at his elbow but no longer gripping his hand, eyed the trees above them. 

There was a presence in the forest he had not felt before, a feeling so intense he could almost reach out and touch it. Mary took a step toward the tree and pulled up short, making a sound as if she’d been punched. 

“My god,” the woman whispered. 

The air above their heads began moving, the leaves coming to life as a breeze began to swirl in and around the canopy. Mulder looked to Scully, whose eyes were focused on Mary, who took another step toward the tree, her hand outstretched before her. The wind picked up even more and the sky darkened, giving the forest the feel of dusk, though it was nearly noon. 

“Mulder,” Scully said in a low voice next to him. She was making his panic face. 

Mary kept moving forward as if compelled, and when her hand was inches from the tree, an arc of static electricity came off of the bark and into her hand. She gave a muffled start, but pressed on, her hand finally coming into contact with the tree.

“It’s angry,” Mary stated, her hand resting on the trunk, “and sad.” She turned to look at Mulder. 

“The tree?” Mulder asked, having to raise his voice to be heard above the increasing volume of the psithurism above them. 

“Yes,” Mary said, closing her eyes as if in pain, “The girl is here, too — Dakaasin. The other Blackbird.” She took a hissing breath. “Her magic is here. It’s speaking to me.”

A low rumble wret the air to the north and Mulder could feel the reverberations come up through the earth. The sharp tang of ozone lifted the hairs on the back of his neck. 

“The tree absorbed her magic?” Mulder asked. 

“It absorbed everything,” Mary said, “her magic, her pain…” she then doubled over, her hand still on the tree. Scully took a step toward her, but Mulder grabbed her arm and pulled her back. 

“Don’t, Scully,” he said, and Mary moaned again.

“Mulder,” she said, pulling on him. Ever the doctor, her need to help felt -- to him -- like a compulsion.

“Scully, it’s not-” he started, when lightning streaked across the sky directly overhead. 

Mary slumped down to her knees, her hand sliding down the trunk of the tree, leaving a streak of charred bark in its wake. The answering crack of thunder sounded close -- too close -- but it didn’t stop Scully from yanking back hard and freeing herself from Mulder’s grip. She ran toward Mary and skidded to a halt at the woman’s side, but made no move to touch her or the tree.

Mulder approached with more caution and Mary looked at them both weakly, the wind thrashing her hair wildly about her face.

“I need to release them,” she gasped. 

“How?” Mulder asked, dropping to his knees beside Scully. 

Mary said nothing, but two fat tears spilled over her cheeks, her face a mask of weary resignation.

The wind howled through the forest and Mulder could hear trees creaking and branches snapping, the limbs falling around them. Broad green leaves were whipping past his face. 

“You should go,” Mary called above the gale, with an eerie finality. 

Rising, Mulder took several steps back. “Come on, Scully,” he said, but his partner would not move, the look in her eyes the steely resolve of empathy. 

The forest was howling, seething with an angry wind. Lightning and thunder came almost on top of each other, the air around them as ominously dark as an eclipse. Mary placed her other hand on the tree and the ground under them began to vibrate. 

“Go,” Mary cried, her voice beginning to crescendo; Mulder wasn’t sure who she was talking to. Moments later her head whipped around toward Scully, her irises all black. 

“Get back!” she yelled at Scully desperately -- there was a second voice added to Mary’s, as if two people were speaking in sync -- _“We can’t control it! We don’t know how!”_

Mulder lunged forward, wrapping an arm around Scully’s waist and heaving her bodily backwards until they were both scrambling away from Mary and the tree. The atmosphere surrounding them started to hum and when Mulder looked to Scully, her eyes were wide and her hair was rising up into the air as if she were touching a Van de Graaff generator. His heart in his throat, he dove at her, knocking her to the forest floor and covering her body with his own just as a blinding white flash cut through the air on an apocalyptic boom. Blinded and half deaf, Mulder kept his hands wrapped around Scully’s head as shards of wood and clumps of dirt hit them with the force of bullets.

And then… nothing. 

With his ears ringing, he slowly unfolded himself from atop Scully and grabbed her face in his hands, looking her over for any sign of injury. She put her hands over his and looked at him, her gaze intense and significant. 

“Are you okay?” he asked, though he could barely hear the words coming out of his own mouth. He shook his head, pulling his hands back to reach up to his ears -- they came away free of blood. Scully did the same to her own, grimaced, and put a hand on his arm, nodding. After a brief moment of individual self-assessment, they turned.

The tree -- and Mary -- were gone. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

Scully stood and twisted on her heel scanning the woods, expecting to find the woman’s body flung somewhere wide, but she saw nothing. The tree itself had been blasted out of existence; a lightly smoking crater taking the place of the mammoth pine. 

“Where is she?” Scully asked Mulder, astonished, as he scanned the woods as well. The ringing in her ears was beginning to fade. 

The sky had somehow totally cleared and the day was once again bright. Gradually insects began to hum again and birds tentatively called to each other. A squirrel chattered angrily at them from a tree.

“I don’t--” he said, spinning in every direction. “Scully, she’s… gone.”

“She can’t be,” Scully faltered, though she had no explanation.

They were each of them covered with shards of wood pulp and bark, the air around them smelling of ozone and pine and fire. Scully ran a hand through her hair and it caught on a hundred bits of debris. 

Mulder had an abrasion above his eye that was leaking blood. She was reaching up to wipe some away when he stilled her hand and pointed to where the tree had stood. 

“Look,” he said and they both made their way slowly toward it, their steps trepidatious. 

Water was bubbling up from the earth where the tree had been, seeping into and climbing the sides of the depression the trunk had left, rising up and over the edge as they approached. 

“Groundwater?” Mulder asked, his voice quiet, almost as if he were afraid of speaking out loud. 

The water kept coming more and more quickly, spilling over the sides of the depression and running west, first in rivulets and then merging into a stream. Mulder grabbed Scully’s arm as she leaned over to look down into the source. 

“I think… I think it made a spring,” she said in wonder, and then gasped as a cool, blue glow began pulsing from somewhere deep within the well. Scully felt herself drawn to it as if compelled by a divine source and she knelt down next to the pool, sharp spikes of pulverized tree digging into her knees. 

“Scully,” said Mulder tentatively, “Scully, are you-” and then the blue light flashed brightly and both she and Mulder fell back as it rose up to the surface of the water, suddenly joined by a zephyr of wind, and flowed -- lightning-fast, down the newly running stream. They scrambled to their feet and chased it to the bluff, watching as the flash of light ran down the new waterfall. It raced on, following the widening creek through the small spit of forest until it hit Lake Michigan and seemed to cast out as if it were colored dye. One bright flash, a crack as if the sound barrier had been breached, a last puff of wind, and then it was gone. 

Scully felt something inside her click and then release, her breath leaving her as if she’d had the wind knocked out of her. Next to her, she saw Mulder lean forward, hands reaching down to brace against his knees, similarly affected. 

The water from the cavity where the tree had stood kept coming, followed along by a cool wind, streaming out of the pool and wending its way west, purling toward the big lake, toward the place of Eleanor’s peace.  
  


**_EPILOGUE_ **

  
  


Case File #X081712

Agents of Record: 

SA Dana Scully JTT0331613

SA Fox Mulder JTT 047101111

Initially classified as a possible alien abduction/encounter, the case that Agent Mulder and myself were called to investigate quickly proved to be nothing of the sort, though the incidents experienced by the victims involved were as equally rare and frightening. 

Put succinctly: the dreams of those afflicted by a rare and still-unexplained phenomenon had the power to hurt those around them and the ability to affect the physical world, with very real repercussions. 

What little we know of the phenomenon was traced back to Dakaasin “Eleanor” Blackbird and her close relative Mary Lou Blackbird, both of whom are no longer living and unlikely to affect anyone going forward. May the events of their tragic lives and deaths teach us all a lesson of tolerance and acceptance and leave us with the hope that humanity can learn from the mistakes of the past. 

There remains no scientific explanation for the events of June 29-July 5 in the Little Traverse Bay region of northern Michigan, but it is my firm belief -- and Agent Mulder concurs -- that no crimes were committed and any loss of life associated with these events, while tragic, were accidental. 

The subjects exposed to the phenomenon are no longer suffering the effects, and I consider the case to be closed. 

-Dana Scully, Special Agent

Agent of Record

  
  


Scully closed the tab on the report and hit _send all_ to shuttle it off to Skinner. As she rose from the chair in front of her rolling secretary desk, she was hit with a wave of nausea, and when she put a hand down to brace herself, felt almost faint with the far-away tinnitus of low blood pressure. The feeling passed after a moment and she vaguely wondered what she could have eaten to cause the minor distress. Perhaps it was time to clean out her fridge and replace her usual staples. She closed the lid on her laptop and pushed the chair in. 

Her phone buzzed from the kitchen -- Mulder, somehow sensing in that way of his that she was passing by -- and she retrieved it and brought it to her ear. 

“I’ve been doing some reading,” he said, plowing headlong into the middle of a conversation as if they’d been talking all day. 

Scully smiled and lowered herself into the corner of her couch, the phone pressed between her ear and shoulder. She could visualize him in a similar position in his own apartment, the warm leather of his couch enveloping him like a lover’s embrace. 

“For millennia, dreams were said to ‘pass through gates of horn and ivory.’ It was a literary image used to distinguish true dreams from false.”

“‘True dreams,’ Mulder?” she pressed, indulging him. She knew he could hear the smile in her voice. 

“Yeah,” he went on, “those corresponding to factual occurrences. The phrase originated in the Greek language, in which the word for ‘horn’ is similar to that for ‘fulfill’ and the word for ‘ivory’ is similar to that for ‘deceive.’ On the basis of that play on words, true dreams are spoken of as coming through the gates of horn, false dreams as coming through those of ivory.”

She could listen to him yammer on all day, she thought; could let the low murmur of his voice wash her from one place to the next. 

“And from whence do your dreams come, Mulder?” she asked. She could hear the leather of his couch squeak under him, imagined him settling further into it.

“I suppose that depends on whether or not _you’re_ in them,” he said, his voice low.

“Say that I am,” she said.

“Well, then my dreams pass through the gates of horn, most assuredly.”

She heard her mantle clock tick on in their comfortable silence, the hiss of the connection almost as reassuring as that of his heart beating under her ear. ‘Fulfill,’ indeed. 

“Good night, Mulder,” she said, her smile one of hope and wist. 

“Good night, Scully,” he replied. “Sweet dreams.”

THE END

  
  


_Author’s note: Though this is a work of fiction, the Indian boarding schools like the one Eleanor attends in this story were very real. They were established in the United States during the late 19th and mid 20th centuries with the primary objective of assimilating Native American children into Euro-American culture._

_First established by Christian missionaries of various denominations, the United States government’s Bureau of Indian Affairs funded many of these religious schools and also founded additional boarding schools based on the assimilation model of the off-reservation Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The Carlisle school was founded by a civil war Lieutenant by the name of Richard Pratt, who famously said,_ **_“all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him and save the man.”_ ** _In short, the schools beat the “Indian” out of their students. They were not allowed to speak their native tongue nor wear their native dress. They were not allowed to participate in ceremonies or cultural activities. Severe punishment was administered when rules were broken. The long absence from family and community, in conjunction with the strict rules of the school, resulted in loss of language, culture and history for the tribe. (Not to mention the many documented cases of sexual, manual, physical and mental abuse occurring mostly in church-run schools.)_

 _In 1891, the government issued a “compulsory attendance” law that enabled federal officers to forcibly take Native children from their homes and reservations to send them to the schools. It was not uncommon for parents to try to hide their children, and if they were found, the scene looked more like a kidnapping than a government operation. Many parents were jailed when they refused to give up their children. In 1895, nineteen men of the Hopi Nation were imprisoned in Alcatraz because they refused to send their children to boarding school. It wasn’t until_ **_1978_ ** _that the Indian Child Welfare Act gave Native parents the right to deny their children’s placement in the schools._

 _While Eleanor is fiction, the school she attended was not. The Holy Childhood Boarding School in Harbor Springs, Michigan opened its doors in 1889 and ceased operation, the last of its kind, in_ ** _1983_** _. Throughout the years of their operation, there were upwards of 350 of these schools spread over the whole of the United States. Native peoples across the country are still affected by the legacy of these schools, long after they shut their doors._ _The cultural loss is incalculable, and the emotional toll on the students and their families will likely ripple through every tribal community for generations to come._

 _The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition is an organization whose mission is to lead in the pursuit of understanding and addressing the ongoing trauma created by the US Indian Boarding School policy. To learn more, or to make a donation, their website can be found here:_ [ _https://boardingschoolhealing.org/_ ](https://boardingschoolhealing.org/)

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> For Isadub, whose prompt was: “A paranormal case that involves dreams. A MOTW (human, mutant, hybrid, animal, vegetal, whatever) that can control dreams of people (Inception vibes?). M&S attacked at one point and that will shake them emotionally.”
> 
> I cannot possibly thank my betas enough for their tireless work and endless support: Annie, Fiona, Sarah, Lin (the brainstorm Queen), Amanda, Jaime, you are the glue that binds — I couldn’t have done it without you. Another huge thanks for the endless support of the Shag Specialists, the Book Club, and my girls who were muted for the weekend. If I’m a full six pack, you ladies are the plastic thingy that holds it all together. 
> 
> Here's to my husband who will probably never read this, and my son who I sure hope doesn't.


End file.
